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The Clean
Late Last Night / Psychedelic Clown
On January 24, 2025, Merge Records will reissue two 1994 releases by The Clean: their second studio album Modern Rock, and the “Late Last Night” 7”. These vinyl releases represent the first time either title has been in print on the format since its initial release, and the first time Modern Rock has ever been available on LP in North America.Modern Rock crackles with spontaneous energy, as if The Clean namely, Hamish Kilgour, David Kilgour, and Robert Scott couldn’t help but make music together whenever they were in the same room. Following their 1989 reunion tour and the 1990 release of Vehicle, those opportunities were rare, with Hamish in New York City fronting The Mad Scene, David releasing his first solo album, and Robert recording albums with The Bats at a breakneck pace. Then, for nine days in April 1994, the stars aligned over Dunedin and Modern Rock bloomed into life.It’s an album of easy charm by a band so attuned to guitar pop that they make the creation of their sonic universe seem easy, as if what you’re being let in on is a long-running conversation between three masters at a point where all three are riffing off of each other, line by line and hook by hook. Significantly, after making Modern Rock, The Clean decided to keep the project going on a part-time basis. More than just a reminder to listeners of the reverence fans and musicians had for The Clean, each new record was a welcome surprise that established them as one of the great active bands of the 1990s and 2000s, their second act on par with the many, many groups their first act inspired.To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Modern Rock and “Late Last Night,” both releases have been remastered from the original tapes by producer and engineer Tex Houston and preserve Hamish Kilgour’s original artwork. The reissues offer new and old fans of The Clean alike an opportunity to hear the band at a creative zenith, shining light on an era that, until now, has been the provenance of crate diggers and completionists. Spinning it now, it’s clear why the album has maintained its appeal for 30 years: Modern Rock is timeless, and so are The Clean.
Merge Records
7"
The Clean
Modern Rock (30th Anniversary)
On January 24, 2025, Merge Records will reissue two 1994 releases by The Clean: their second studio album Modern Rock, and the “Late Last Night” 7”. These vinyl releases represent the first time either title has been in print on the format since its initial release, and the first time Modern Rock has ever been available on LP in North America.Modern Rock crackles with spontaneous energy, as if The Clean namely, Hamish Kilgour, David Kilgour, and Robert Scott couldn’t help but make music together whenever they were in the same room. Following their 1989 reunion tour and the 1990 release of Vehicle, those opportunities were rare, with Hamish in New York City fronting The Mad Scene, David releasing his first solo album, and Robert recording albums with The Bats at a breakneck pace. Then, for nine days in April 1994, the stars aligned over Dunedin and Modern Rock bloomed into life.It’s an album of easy charm by a band so attuned to guitar pop that they make the creation of their sonic universe seem easy, as if what you’re being let in on is a long-running conversation between three masters at a point where all three are riffing off of each other, line by line and hook by hook. Significantly, after making Modern Rock, The Clean decided to keep the project going on a part-time basis. More than just a reminder to listeners of the reverence fans and musicians had for The Clean, each new record was a welcome surprise that established them as one of the great active bands of the 1990s and 2000s, their second act on par with the many, many groups their first act inspired.To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Modern Rock and “Late Last Night,” both releases have been remastered from the original tapes by producer and engineer Tex Houston and preserve Hamish Kilgour’s original artwork. The reissues offer new and old fans of The Clean alike an opportunity to hear the band at a creative zenith, shining light on an era that, until now, has been the provenance of crate diggers and completionists. Spinning it now, it’s clear why the album has maintained its appeal for 30 years: Modern Rock is timeless, and so are The Clean.
Merge Records
LP
Jade Hairpins
Get Me the Good Stuff
Jade Hairpins waste no time fulfilling their second album’s titular demand. From its harmony-drenched opening note to its baroque-anthemic conclusion, Get Me the Good Stuff is positively loaded with musical ideas, an absurdist buffet of sound and aesthetic that comes with one hell of a floorshow as the Hairpins stack those ideas higher and higher, almost daring them to crash to the floor. Instead, those elements punksploitation, power pop, baggy, funk, and Italo disco are just some touchstones are not only held aloft, they defy gravity and convention.These pyrotechnics are, in true Jade Hairpins fashion, something of a sleight of hand. While the music swaggers and gallops, Get Me the Good Stuff grapples with anxiety and self-doubt, obfuscating pain and alienation with sparkling wit and some straight-up ravers. Get Me the Good Stuff opens with one of those, “Let It Be Me,” in which Jonah Falco shouts lyrics about being alone with one’s shortcomings against guitars, synths, and harmonized vocals that are on the verge of closing in. The song is just over 90 seconds long, hitting with the gnarled-barb ferocity of punk and the gleeful insanity of theatrical art rock.It is, in other words, overwhelming. Or it would be if Jade Hairpins Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk weren’t remarkably nimble in their ability to bring unity to sounds by placing them in competition against each other. When those sounds are adjacent, like the glam and disco that saturate “Drifting Superstition,” the thrill of those universes colliding in the heat of an absolutely filthy clavichord line turns its lyrics, about the habit of solving personal problems by ignoring them, into a winner’s anthem on the order of Bowie or Hot Chocolate.Get Me the Good Stuff arcs towards unequivocal joy as Falco, Jade Hairpins’ primary lyricist, breaks these cycles and attempts to run away with his dreams. The arc is roughly analogous to how the album came to fruition. Four years removed from Harmony Avenue, an album of material that proved too strong to be contained within the narrative universe of Fucked Up’s Dose Your Dreams, Jade Hairpins have gelled as a live act with Tamsin M. Leach and Jack Goldstein centering them on stage and planted their flag in the UK punk scene in which Falco has embedded himself. Working out new material live, Falco noticed that crowds were digging into his unfinished lyrics, and the album tightened around the anxieties of being in the spotlight, of being worthy of attention.At times, those songs are eager to please, like the album’s title track in which a winking self-deprecation rubs up against the self-congratulatory bombast of Freddie Mercury, Falco simultaneously turning heads as a shooting star and a burning car. Elsewhere, as in “Better Here Than in Love,” Jade Hairpins pitch themselves towards creating gorgeous soundscapes that exist nowhere else, channelling postpunk through the glimmering haze of ’80s Japanese electronic music.Theatrical and personal, absurd and true-to-life, playful and serious, Get Me the Good Stuff is album of tremendous personal and artistic growth that signposts towards dozens of potential futures to come. It’s not only worth the attention, it continuously rewards it.
Merge Records
CD | LP
The Mountain Goats
The Coroner's Gambit
Originally released in October 2000, The Coroner’s Gambit finds John Darnielle between physical and sonic spaces, five of its sixteen songs recorded in Simon Joyner’s Omaha, Nebraska, studio, five more at home in Colo, Iowa, and the rest in Ames.The album came together slowly; the Mountain Goats had released music every year from 1991 to 1998, but between the release of that year’s New Asian Cinema EP and The Coroner’s Gambit, 1999 passed without an official Mountain Goats release. The additional time that went into The Coroner’s Gambit paid off: it is a breakthrough for Darnielle as a songwriter and practitioner of the full-length album. His characters are sharply drawn, the immaculately appointed lore of the worlds they occupy providing them some shelter from the storm.He has grown as a guitarist and in voice, wringing moments of sweetness and humour from songs of fury and lament, nimbly modulating from mourning to longing, passing air through the lungs of the dead and survivors alike.The mix of home and studio recordings grants The Coroner’s Gambit a thrilling sense of immediacy while pointing towards a future that is soon to break open with All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee. The Coroner’s Gambit is a masterpiece in its own right, an introspective epic that further burnishes Darnielle’s reputation as one of our greatest songwriters, one whose gift for confessional fabulism knows few rivals.
Merge Records
CD | LP
Mary Timony
Untame the Tiger
Indies exclusive LP is on #neon pink' coloured vinyl.“As an artist, you have to keep dealing with your shit. Otherwise, you can’t keep making your art.” Mary TimonyFor more than 30 years, singer-songwriter and guitar hero Mary Timony has cut a distinctive path through the world of independent music, most recently as vocalist and guitarist of acclaimed garage-pop power trio Ex Hex (Merge) but also as a member of seminal post[1]punk band Autoclave (Dischord), celebrated leader of the deeply influential Helium (Matador), multifaceted solo artist (Matador, Lookout!, Kill Rock Stars), and a co-founder of supergroup Wild Flag (Merge). Described by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein as “Mary Shelley with a guitar” and dubbed “a trailblazer and an innovator” by Lindsey Jordan a.k.a. Snail Mail, Timony has distinguished herself as one of her generation’s most influential. Although she has remained a cult hero and critical favorite since the early ’90s, Timony’s many triumphs have long been counterbalanced by crippling doubt and self-nullification.
Merge Records
CD | LP
The Mountain Goats
Jenny from Thebes
Jenny from Thebes began its life as many albums by the Mountain Goats do, with John Darnielle playing the piano until a lyric emerged. That lyric, “Jenny was a warrior / Jenny was a thief / Jenny hit the corner clinic begging for relief,” became “Jenny III,” a song which laid down a challenge he’d never taken up before: writing a sequel to one of his most beloved albums.The Mountain Goats’ catalog is thick with recurring characters Jenny, who originally appears in the All Hail West Texas track bearing her name, as well as in “Straight Six” from Jam Eater Blues and Transcendental Youth side two jam “Night Light,” is one of these, someone who enters a song unexpectedly, pricking up the ears of fans who are keen on continuing the various narrative threads running through the Mountain Goats’ discography before vanishing into the mist. In these songs, Jenny is largely defined by her absence, and she is given that definition by other characters. She is running from something. These features are beguiling, both to the characters who’ve told her story so far and to the listener. They invite certain questions: Who is Jenny, really? What is she running from? Well, she’s a warrior and a thief, and, this being an album by the Mountain Goats, it’s a safe bet whatever she’s fleeing is something bad. Something catastrophically bad.
Merge Records
CD | LP
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