The special 40th anniversary edition of the Red Cross EP, which includes the band’s six-song eponymous debut and adds five contemporaneous extra tracks, is the most comprehensive document to date of the extraordinary birth of Redd Kross. In a single 12-month period, Jeff and Steven McDonald, two adolescent brothers from Hawthorne, CA, went from posing with cheap guitars and singing into hairbrushes in front of their bedroom mirror to recording in world-class studios and performing live at punk shows/riots that are still being pondered and written about for their pioneering cultural relevance within the Southern California punk landscape. Redd Kross incubated alongside such SoCal luminaries as Black Flag, Descendents, and the Minutemen, and this new 11-song collection which includes a live track recorded in 1979 at “The Church,” the infamous Black Flag birthplace in Hermosa Beach, CA puts in proper perspective the McDonald brothers’ contribution, at the ridiculously precocious ages of 12 and 16, to that area’s punk scene.

The demo session was recorded at Media Art in Hermosa Beach, the same studio where Black Flag made their Nervous Breakdown EP. Engineered by Spot and produced by power pop godfather Joe Nolte of the Last, these four tracks mark the first time the band had ever stepped foot in a recording studio. Notably, the demo session was paid for with 12-year-old bassist Steven’s paper route money. A couple of months later, in October 1979, the band recorded the “Posh Boy” sessions at the Shelter, a studio in Hollywood owned by Shelter Records, which was home to rock vet Leon Russell and relative newcomers at the time Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Engineered by guitarist Jim Mankey (Sparks, Concrete Blonde), this session produced the proto power pop punk classics “Annette’s Got the Hits” and “I Hate My School,” both of which would appear on their 1980 self-titled debut EP on Posh Boy Records.

The entire birth story of Redd Kross is being celebrated on this 40th anniversary edition of Red Cross (known to many as “the Posh Boy EP”), and these tracks sound as fresh and vital to our ears now as they did when they were originally released four decades ago.

Sabrina Ellis, Andrew Cashen & Danny Blanchard (of Sweet Spirit) also perform together in the Austin Texas outfit A Giant Dog. Trinidad was recorded and produced by Stuart Sikes (Cat Power, Black Joe Lewis, White Stripes)

"When people dance, they are fulfilling a human desire where instinct and culture meet. Dance and music are built into the mechanics of being human. We are born instinctively with these impulses. To dance is to speak unspoken agreements," says Sweet Spirit frontperson Sabrina Ellis.

The six members of Sweet Spirit like pranks, glitter eyeshadow, and good stories. They also enjoy making music, as evidenced by the 12 bands they collectively play in. But above all, they love dancing, that place between exorcise and exercise. Sweet Spirit's famously raucous and sweaty live shows satisfy both their own and their audience's need for connection and release.

Trinidad marks the Merge debut of this mighty sextet from Austin, TX. The songs are stripped down yet more intricate than ever before. It's a pop record made by punk rockers sonically happy but lyrically bitter. Lustful, sassy, and passionate.

Touting inspirations as varied as Prince, T. Rex, William Onyeabor, ABBA, Roy Orbison, Shintaro Sakamoto, Francoise Hardy, and Robyn, Sweet Spirit have created an album that pulsates with more LinnDrum and synth than guitar. From the opening riff of 'Behold,' Sabrina, Andrew, Danny, Josh, Jon, and Jake establish their slightly cynical world of fantasy, hard truths, and all manner of longing.

“No Dancing” bemoans the lack of magic in the club, while live favorite “Fingerprints” sets out to “get you away from your lover.” Author/composer Mark Mallman of Minneapolis says, “Those who believe in demons see demons. In music, the demon is silence. In nature, snakes that appear to dance are actually fighting. Palm trees that kiss the beach during hurricane winds appear to dance when set to music in a video. There is no genre to dancing, only to its cause. In this instance, the cause is called Sweet Spirit.”

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock’n’roll trio. They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. Post-punk and garage rock hammered together by a relentless rhythmic pulse. Jenny McKechnie channels her struggles into songs that resonate deeply, giving voice to feelings often buried in modern life.

Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown are a rhythm section anchored in Stooges primitivism, relentlessly hammering out a bedrock for McKechnie’s guitar pyrotechnics and vocal wallop. Three friends summoning a rhythmic tide to deliver anthems that turn latent anxieties into a rallying cry. The band has been committed to an inclusive feminist and political outlook since its inception in 2015, exploring issues of gendered violence, colonialism, and sexual assault. The band members have been involved in benefit shows, organized DIY festivals, and volunteer with Girls Rock!, a not-for-profit organization that aims to empower female, trans, and gender non-binary youth in music.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Indies-only Black and orange swirl vinyl.

Redd Kross invite you to explore Beyond the Door, an album inspired by the band’s “total commitment to having the best f*cking time we can have while we’re all still here” (what they like to call “the Party”). It’s a rock and roll record and a celebration of everything brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald love, from cultures both high and low. Musically, it’s guitars, bass, and drums topped with a generous portion of sweet vocal melodies often delivered with an ambiguous edge. Beyond the Door marks Redd Kross’ most collaborative record to date. Steven describes this evolution: “Jeff is still very much the driving force behind the compositions, but with more help from me than ever. Jeff and I haven’t shared this much of the writing and singing since Born Innocent in 1981.” Guitarist Jason Shapiro and drummer Dale Crover (Melvins, OFF!) are longtime members of the Redd Kross live band, but this album marks the pair’s recorded debut with the group. Mixed in Los Angeles by Steven McDonald, Beyond the Door includes notable guest appearances from Anna Waronker (That Dog), Geré Fennelly, Buzz Osborne (Melvins), and Josh Klinghoffer. Setting the stage is album opener “The Party,” a raucous cover of the Henry Mancini-penned title theme from a 1968 Blake Edwards film.

The opening line of the song (“The party is groovy and everyone here loses control, yeah…”) is the perfect declaration Redd Kross want to make—and they don’t just mean some beer-guzzling teen hesher affair, either. The Redd Kross party is groovy, yeah… Just listen! Of title track “Beyond the Door” Steven recounts, “I started the track as just a fun glitter romp, and during tracking, Jeff decided to take a stab at writing the vocal melody and lyrics. Seems like an obvious way to work, but we’ve never done it before. From that came a tale of childhood obsession with demonic possession nurtured on TV brain junk food and the golden age of rock and roll, 1971–73.” On the surface, the album title is a playful reference to an Italian horror film the McDonald brothers watched as children, a loose rip-off of both The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby that stars Juliet Mills of ’70s television program Nanny and the Professor. But like all things Redd Kross, it would be a sad injustice to stop digging there.

No one knows what lies Beyond the Door… but we’re all in front of it. Inspirations as varied as K-pop, glitter gangs, embarrassed tweens, long-term relationships, a mysterious character named Fantástico Roberto, and much more all contributed to Beyond the Door, an album that lures the listener into Redd Kross’ secret club full of riddles and inside jokes, with the ultimate reward of the perfect pop moment! 

Sneaks, a.k.a. Eva Moolchan, emerges from the male-dominated Baltimore-Washington punk scene, joining the resistance forged by queer black feminists who create, explore, empower, conquer, and play bass. Highway Hypnosis combines bewitching beats and invented words, to produce what Clash Magazine described as “stripped down hip-hop, skeletal post-punk, and extra-dimensional pop music.” Recorded at New York’s Silent Barn in 2017, Highway Hypnosis was co-produced by Carlos Hernandez (of Ava Luna), Tony Seltzer (Princess Nokia), and Eva Moolchan herself. A glimmering anthem shrouded in an atmosphere of darkness, her first single “Beliefs” drops its bass along with a call to arms for all non-believers whose mantra is assigned: “Remove your beliefs and start again / ’cause all I wanna do is start again.” Among laughter samples and charming vocals featured on the album lie one club banger, your little sister’s anti-meat school lunch protest song, a 55-second epic bass surprise, and a Jacknife Lee (Taylor Swift, Bat for Lashes, R.E.M.) production credit on “Hong Kong to Amsterdam.” 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliantly rhythmic dubbed-out beats, angular synth-pop and Moolchan's visceral vocal delivery. As dark as it is absorbing, 'Highway Hypnosis' is an essential addition to the scene, and an absolutely stunning listen. Top stuff.

Devotion: Songs About Rivers and Spirits and Children is a limited-edition deluxe box set which includes remastered reissues of the classic Hiss albums Bad Debt, Poor Moon, and Haw as well as Virgo Fool, a rarities compilation that will only be available physically as part of this collection. Both the 4-CD and 4-LP sets are housed in a cloth-wrapped, foil-stamped slipcase and feature original iconographic artwork by Sam Smith, an exclusive foldout poster, full lyrics, and new liner notes by New Yorker writer Amanda Petrusich and MOJO editor John Mulvey.

What struck me about Hiss Golden Messenger—and my absorption in these early records was instantaneous—is that Taylor’s songs are completely and unfailingly honest about how stupid and frustrating it is to be a person. But then, of course, he finds magnificence anyway: “Hallelujah anyhow” is how he put it later. Amanda Petrusich. “Even on his most raw and unadorned album, Bad Debt, or on his most troubled, Haw, Taylor is still striving for that next level. Sometimes the epiphanies arrive through lyrical graft; “I’m trying to learn,” he vows, emblematically, on “Sufferer (Love My Conqueror).”

Sometimes, they manifest musically, as if the collective endeavour of a band can provide consolation, for both the participants and the listeners, in even the darkest of times. It’s these imperatives, I think, that have made me turn to Hiss Golden Messenger records more than any others over the past decade; Taylor’s issues are all too understandable, but his creative solutions to them are almost mystically uplifting to a non-musician like myself. His music articulates an untethered spiritual meaning, one which can make sense to those of us who have no coherent system of belief. On these albums, you can hear a mission, a compassionate vision, being improvised and fleshed out exponentially, as Taylor’s sense of community and his place in it grows with every release. Also, they really fucking swing”.

FORMAT INFORMATION

4xLP Box Set Info: 4LP set is cloth-wrapped slipcase box with matte foil stamping. LPs in debossed jackets + lyric inserts + foldout poster.

FREE SHIPPING This item has FREE UK shipping!

Born in Cabbagetown, Georgia, the Rock*A*Teens carved their signature echo-wrapped, wounded-heart music on the edges of the Atlanta music scene more than 20 years ago. Led by songwriter and lead singer/guitarist Christopher Lopez, the band released a handful of reverb-drenched singles and full-lengths on the independent Daemon and Merge labels in the late '90s and early 2000s. Following their reunion at the Merge 25 festival and the reissue of their last LP Sweet Bird of Youth (Merge, 2000), the group returned to touring and playing live. Restless with the need to move forward, the band began writing and recording new music. Guided by a batch of home recordings and demos, Lopez, guitarist Justin Hughes, bassist William R. Joiner, and drummer Ballard Lesemann convened with Tim Delaney at Electron Gardens Studio and Rafael Pereira at Tribo Studios to shape their ideas into the glorious, bombastic new album Sixth House.

These days, Lopez and the R*A*Ts are turning towa rds a more refined approach to recording and performance while preserving their distinctly unvarnished lyrical and musical perspective. "In the past we hid behind walls of reverb, noise, production tricks," Lopez says. "We wanted these particular songs to stand in the light." On Sixth House, the gauze is removed—the anthems are illuminated, the ballads are clear-eyed, and the stories are in sharp focus. Mixed by Pereira and engineer Spencer Willis and mastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service, the album features artwork by NYC photographer Chris Verene. Sixth House stands out as the band’s most musically distinct, vibrant, and soulfully rendered album of its career. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited, indies-only translucent green vinyl

Formed in Brooklyn in 1998, The Essex Green released four albums between 1999 and 2006. They became one of the few bands from the Northeast to be associated with the groundbreaking Elephant 6 Collective. Their unique blend of harmony-infused pop music culminated in the 2006 release of Cannibal Sea. Sasha Bell, Jeff Baron, and Christopher Ziter were last seen together in the late aughts, waving from their van as they bid farewell to Brooklyn. And then, the unthinkable: The Essex Green went silent. But why? Legal cannabis? Climate change? Bad oysters? Nothing so dramatic. It was a simple promise made among them to chase down their separate dreams: Baron to build a houseboat and navigate the mighty Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers; Ziter to return to his home state of Vermont and lead local fermentation efforts; and Bell to decamp to Montana to study elk rutting. Having achieved their goals or not, they vowed to break their silence in secret on the frigid waters of Lake Champlain during the blood moon eclipse of 2015 when the effect of the moon in Libra would be most powerful. Over the next two years, the three continued to meet and record in undisclosed locations. The result is Hardly Electronic, a music mapping of the trio’s personal journeys over the past decade. Fans will recognize The Essex Green’s signature sound in this work of wax: stacks of harmonies, upbeat melodies telling melancholy tales, layers of keys and sparkling Telecasters. Their time-honored custom of fusing obsession with spontaneity has been refined through experience and wisdom.

Hardly Electronic explores the evolution of old friendships, the sadness of losing touch, the inadequacies of technology, and finally, the desire for reconnection with songs like “Bye Bye Crow” and “Slanted by Six.” Themes of connectivity for the online generation are on display in the war cry chorus of “Don’t Leave It in Our Hands,” while songs like “Bristol Sky” and “January Says” hint at how the same technology-connected culture can create division and distance, even in the most personal of relationships. On the flip side, the wonders of technology (and jumbo jets) made the recording possible. With Bell living in Montana, Ziter in Vermont, and Baron on the river, finding ways to work together was challenging. The result is classic Essex Green sonic diversity

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Coloured LP (MRG633LPC1) is with a matte jacket with Euro sleeve + red & orange swirl vinyl

On Room Inside the World—Ought’s third album and first for Merge—growing up doesn’t mean mellowing out so much as it means learning to pay attention, listening carefully and openly, staying somewhere long enough to really understand where you are. Recorded at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn with producer Nicolas Vernhes (Deerhunter, Animal Collective, Silver Jews), Room Inside the World explores themes that have always concerned the band—identity, connection, survival in a precarious world—but with a bolder, more nuanced sound palette. Vibraphone, justly intonated synthesizers, drum machines, and a 70-piece choir suffuse the precise post-punk breakdowns that spangled Ought’s first two albums, giving rise to an emotional complexity that pushes their characteristically taut sound to greater depths.

Ought approached this record with newfound patience, constructing a (digital) moodboard to set their intentions: Brian Eno and Stereolab synths, the Mekons’ 1985 album Fear and Whiskey, and Gerhard Richter and Kenneth Anger’s sexy, fluorescent hyperreal all made it into the melting pot. “The process of everybody wading into each other’s subconscious was really excellent,” says frontman, guitarist, and lyricist Tim Darcy. Holed up in their rehearsal building, an industrial rock block (and sock factory) overlooking the Trans-Canada Highway, the band strove for greater detail and specificity than before while remaining true to the collaborative, intuitive writing process that yielded their earlier work. On Room Inside the World, Ought gnaw at questions that have hovered around their music since they first began playing: How do you live in this world without destroying yourself? What is it that we can do for each other to make the lives we’ve been given easier? Room Inside the World steps away from the nervousness and irony that characterizes Ought’s previous records

H.C. McEntire, frontwoman of Mount Moriah, strikes out on her own with her debut solo album LIONHEART, a collection of songs inspired by the American South and a desire to reclaim "country" music from the hetero-normative, homogenous schtick of tailgates and six-packs and men chasing women. Stereogum describes her voice as "weary, wise, and bright as morning sunshine all at once," and that sunshine glows throughout the triumphant LIONHEART. "LIONHEART is personal: from recording it mostly at my house, to inviting close friends to play on it and put themselves in it, to the deeply autobiographical narratives of place and people," writes McEntire. "In music, there are no rules.

You make your own language. You can be both the Southern rock outlier and the twangy gospel conduit. You can be both the cherubic, honey-tongued innocent and the ardent punk. To get here - to find my lion hear - I had to become them all."For the album, McEntire collaborated with many of her favorite musicians, including Kathleen Hanna, Angel Olsen, Amy Ray, Tift Merritt, William Tyler, and Phil Cook, while remaining bravely devoted to her most authentic self throughout the process. LIONHEART was recorded during the first few months of 2017 with additional recording and mixing taking place on the run as McEntire toured the world as a member of Angel Olsen's band. “I learned a great deal about who I am and how to trust myself while making this record,” muses McEntire. “In general, the songs feel more country to me, in a sincere way. There’s gospel. There’s more pop. There’s no hiding

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Introduction to Escape-ism by Escape-ism isn’t a typical record. Oh, sure, it looks like one, with a label in the center and mysterious grooves etched on a sleek, black disc that glints in the light with a perverse air of knowing treachery. And sure, when a diamond needle is dragged through said groove, it shrieks and sputters with the familiar range of “rock ’n’ roll” sound effects: low-frequency bass, high-end hi-hat stutters, and a middlebrow voice that gasps and cries for love, justice, redemption, insurrection, everything. And yes, Introduction… reacts like a normal record to direct sunlight; it suffers silently until giving evidence of its agony with an awful “warp.” Its cover is even like a normal record jacket: glossy cardstock with a cool design, group name, song titles, record label information, and the like.

But this disc is different. It shouldn’t only be reviewed in the music press but in the “world affairs” column of a conspiracy-minded newspaper, on a hot-rod review TV show, or possibly at an important conference by a renowned astrophysicist. It’s that important! Why? Because it’s the first “solo” record by Ian Svenonius—of groups The Make-Up, Chain & the Gang, XYZ, Weird War, etc. and author of underground bestsellers such as The Psychic Soviet, Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock ’n’ Roll Group, and Censorship Now!!—and as such, it’s profound, prophetic, perverse, and poetic… It’s introverted glitter, violence against the state, obsessive desire; it stomps on convention, shreds constitutions, clobbers pre-conceived notions of what a record can be.

Yes, that’s right: a single-person performance by I F Svenonius—recognized by Performer Magazine as the “greatest performer on the planet”—Introduction to Escapeism is a bite into a one-banana bunch. A drum box, a guitar, a cassette player, and a single slobbering, sinful voice singing out… for a way out. Live, it’s a new paradigm of performance: raw, gestural, idiotic, sublime, revolutionary, poetic, faux naïf, unknowing, a drainage pipe that leads to who knows where. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A visceral and unflinching record, dedicated to the beauty of simplicity, but imbued with a sufficiently nuanced delivery, and brilliantly skillful hand at songwriting. Eminently enjoyable, and comfortingly real.

FORMAT INFORMATION

Coloured LP Info: Limited white LP

Coloured LP includes MP3 Download Code.

Out in the Storm is the blazing result of a woman reawakened. Her most autobiographical and honest album to date, Out in the Storm is a self-reflective anchor in the story of both Katie Crutchfield’s songwriting and her life. The album tells the story of taking control of a volatile situation, embracing flaws, and exploring a new sonic freedom. The album was tracked at Miner Street Recordings in Philadelphia with John Agnello, known for working with some of the most iconic musicians of the last 25 years, including Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth.

For Agnello, it was Crutchfield’s voice that drew him in. “The first demo song I heard was ‘Fade’. The melodies, the way she sings it, the way she turns the melody, and the way she goes note to note is literally beautiful. Singers—you either have it or you don’t. She has it.” Agnello and Crutchfield worked together for most of December 2016, along with the band: sister Allison Crutchfield on keyboards and percussion, Katherine Simonetti on bass, and Ashley Arnwine on drums; Katie Harkin, touring guitarist with Sleater-Kinney, also contributed lead guitar. At Agnello’s suggestion, the group recorded most of the music live to enhance their unity in a way that gives the album a fuller sound compared to past releases, resulting in one of Waxahatchee’s most guitar-driven releases to date. “My experience working with John was genuinely life-changing,” says Crutchfield. “We had such a great connection right off the bat, and I really feel like he was always looking out for me.

He pushed me when I needed it, and gave me space when I needed it.” Crutchfield’s voice oscillates between effortless grace and commanding righteousness, taking the listener with her on an explicitly personal journey. Songs like “Hear You” and “No Question” are lyrically unapologetic and musically resolute, while the softer acoustic songs like “A Little More” and “Fade” let fear and melancholy seep through. But it is on the atmospheric “Sparks Fly” where we feel an essential redemption. “Sparks Fly” acts as an inner dialogue and marks the first time since the inception of Waxahatchee that any semblance of self-love has shone through. 

FORMAT INFORMATION

LP Info: Standard LP is black vinyl in uncoated jacket w/ foil stamp & black dustsleeve + poster + DL.

On November 11, we welcome Sneaks to Merge Records with the reissue of her debut album Gymnastics, which Impose called one of its favorite records of 2015. Check out "True Killer" now, and pre-order the album on CD or LP in the Merge store or digitally via iTunes. Sneaks songs are the mesmerizing post-punk incantations of Washington, DC's Eva Moolchan. Bass and drum machine underpin Moolchan's compelling vocals, and the music straddles several decades of serious minimalist fun to create her own unique niche of rock. "The songs came together pretty fast, very tongue-in-cheek," writes Moolchan of Gymnastics. "I was playing with how we use language and twisting the words of mundane slogans, ads, and repetitive symbols I was seeing while attending school." Sneaks is currently recording her sophomore album Hi Spirits with Mary Timony and Jonah Takagi, to be released on Merge in early 2017. While her music and lyrics are rooted in punk, Sneaks' live shows often provide the joy and release of a dance party. See the band on tour this fall, with more dates to be announced soon.

The writing of the songs that became Heart Like a Levee started in a hotel room in Washington DC in January of 2015 during a powerful storm that darkened the East Coast. At that time I was feeling—more acutely than I had ever felt before—wrenched apart by my responsibilities to my family and to my music. Forgetting, momentarily, that for me, each exists only with the other. How could I forget? Though maybe my lapse was reasonable: I had just quit my job, the most recent and last, in a series of dead-end gigs stretching back 20 years, with the vow that my children would understand their father as a man in love with his world and the inventor of his own days. They would be rare in that regard. And then—driven by monthly bills and pure fear— I left for another tour, carrying a load of guilt that I could just barely lift. But in that snowy hotel room I found the refrain that became my compass: I was a dreamer, babe, when I set out on the road; but did I say I could find my way home?

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Optimism clearly doesn't come too easily to M.C Taylor, but you might just be mistaken for thinking that he's made his peace with the world from this shining and cautiously cheery suite of lovelorn sonnets. Perfectly produced and heartfelt country-tinged acoustic odes, and minor-key stripped back melodies. Stunning.

Original score music by indie legends Portastatic, moody film noir style complete with film narration, excellent stuff!!

Versus are a band from New York City. Their 4th full length album, recorded by the band in their NYC rehearsal space over the course of a year and a half. Songs that are delicate yet complex, weaving intricate sonic dialogues, flourishes of blissful noise mixed with gentle waves of soothing calm, while always staying true to their infectious pop roots.