Merge is about to re-release In the Aeroplane over the Sea and On Avery Island on 180-Gram Vinyl for all of the Neutral Milk freaks out there. This band is hauntingly weird and great. After reading the chapter on the group in Merge’s “Our Noise” I am tempted to scrap writing this entry...
Jeff Magnum was completely unknown to me last week. To the scores of blog freak indie-music junkies out there this is undoubtedly blasphemy to admit, but its true. My roommate is a bit of an indie music encyclopedia compared to me and he left this book on our living room table the other day. Our Noise: “The Story of Merge Records...The Indie Label that got big and stayed small.” To be honest the only things that I knew about in this book were Ryan Adams, who wrote the introduction, and Arcade Fire, who fill the last chapter. I had heard some Superchunk on the Drunkard and other music blogs and thought the tracks were great, but never pursued them further. To be further honest, I really don’t know jack about either of the other two acts either-other than the fact that my friend Elliott Randal (great bay area singer/songwriter currently touring) loves Ryan Adams, and that Adams toured with Phil Lesh and was a drunken mess who didn’t care about fame or showing up to the gig!! and that he supposedly openly hates one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Jeff Tweedy. I also have heard about five of his songs, which apparently is exactly one percent of the songs he churns out per year. I did like them, though, wide range of styles with a fair amount of my dear country-roots-rock-alt.-whatever you want to call it, and I could care less if he hates Jeff Tweedy because good music is good music and Adams sounds like a working class rock and roller through and through from the sources I’ve talked to. Arcade Fire, eh....I’d heard the name and graded some reports on them, but couldn’t tell you anything about them.
So...I read the intro by Adams and was immediately thrown into the world of Merge. I wanted to know more!! I wanted to find a 7” at my local record store and I did. I wanted to have been there from the start, but it was impossible. So...I excitedly asked my roommate, Jonny Boy, who writes a damn good tune himself, about Merge and who else got to have that label on their records. He shoots a sly sideways glance and hands me In the Aeroplane over the Sea. For me, the album is great right away. Simple I-IV-V harmonies put together with a harmonic rhythm that make them sound new for an instant. The vocals seemed a little strange to me the first time through, but the lyrics were instantly spellbinding. I found myself scanning back... What did he just say? Forks and pianos filled with flames? Does this make sense or is it just poetically confusing enough to make you listen. The second time through I was reading the lyrics as they were half belted, half sung, half yelled (YEAH, THERE’S 3 HALVES). This is a good record (Understatement). One of those records that I know many people wouldn’t get if I gave it to them. It would be like trying to tell people who have never listened to Tom Waits how great Rain Dogs is. That it is a desert island record that I can’t live without. Trust me, I try all the time and watch their faces drop when I press play. They to sit through it and sink back into their crap first-impression records that flash by faster than Usain Bolt with a rocket up his keister. Polished up turds with “this second” styled characters on the cover designed to hit the top and disappear. And they always succeed. Meanwhile...
Aeroplane is a record that one has to want to discover. At least on some level. You have to decide for yourself if it is crap or brilliance. I’ve made my decision and I’ve bought On Avery Island and I think it is damn good, too. I listened to it while I read the Neutral Milk Article in the Merge book, which I also highly recommend. The chapter on this band alone is worth the cover price. These guys meant it when they said they were wearied by the lure of the real world and the business of music. The last line of the chapter is a small quote from Magnum’s email reply to an inquiry about interviewing for the book, which he humbly and graciously denied. The email ends: “It gladdens me to see that it’s the human labels like Merge who are fully alive in this moment, while the giants of the music industry are all eating shit. May it forever be so.” The two full length LPS on Merge are so rough and raw yet ordered and cohesive, too. I pre-ordered Aeroplane on vinyl and will forever search my record stores for more 7” presses from the early days of Merge. I would kill to be on this label.
