Merchandise – A Corpse Wired For Sound

Difficult, fragmented, but incredibly beautiful...

Rough comparisons have always done a disservice to the scope of vision between Merchandise’s two principle songwriters Carson Cox and David Vassalotti. For a songwriting duo that got together over a love of Ornette Coleman’s ‘Free Jazz’, Faust’s ‘Faust IV’, and Muslimgauze’s ‘Lo-Fi India Abuse’, one imagines it can be pretty amusing for them to see papers and blogs hail them the next Tears For Fears with shades of Echo and the Bunnymen during every album campaign. But comparisons, like genres themselves, are usually a marketing tool — demarcating the boundaries of an artist’s creativity in the hopes of cellophane wrapping an easy-to-digest package. The real truth lies across the void between critic and artist.

‘A Corpse Wired For Sound’ is the second record Merchandise have put out for 4AD. Their first, ‘After The End’, saw the group remake themselves as a pop band — think less Tame Impala, more Roxy Music. The band refused to compromise on any of the weirdness that made them so unique, instead crafting a set of louche but palatable songs with clever arrangements that would attempt to entice you into their world but as David says in the press bumph for this album, “it couldn’t last.” On ‘A Corpse…’ we see a return to the same kind of noise rock dynamics they tried on first LP ‘Strange Songs In The Dark’. Swirling ambience characterises the album’s first few seconds as ‘Flower Of Sex’ gets underway. The DIY production is rigorous and academic in its detail. Certain drums are out of reach, certain guitars don’t want to announce themselves as guitars, at every turn the album asks you to stop listening to the bricks and just listen to the wall.

Of their five records to date, ‘A Corpse…’ is their heaviest. They picked the title because in Carson’s words: “it could be anything or nothing but either way it sounds fucked up.” Every motif they explore, both musically and lyrically, seems to obliquely refer to it. Whether it’s the lifeless metallic guitars, gut-sinking dive-bombs, and blunt dubby drums of ‘End Of The Week’ or the abject lyrical jadedness of ‘Right Back To The Start’, everything retroactively seems to converse with the metaphoric ‘corpse’ to make for a listen that’s sometimes deeply uncomfortable in its pessimism — like voyeuristically peering into a stolen journal only to recoil at the realisation that you’re looking at the fears and traumas of another human being.

Fragmented and seemingly built for solitary listening with headphones, ‘A Corpse Wired For Sound’ nevertheless succeeds in holding your attention for the entirety. While often bleak, there is a joy to be heard for anyone willing to look for it. The joy of making music and experimenting really permeates the later parts of the album. On ‘Lonesome Sound’ David effortlessly peels off a frankly bizarre guitar lick that sounds like a saxophone squawking free jazz. For the most part a somber song, the outro to ‘Silence’ sees the group spectacularly murder the thing they’re writing about with earth-shatteringly noisy synths. ‘I Will Not Sleep Here’ is a Vassalotti song written almost a decade ago which the group have had troubles recording over the years – it’s euphoric to hear them finally nail it. Meanwhile all the heads will have found their new favourite live song in the driving beats and transcendent arrangements of ‘My Dream Is Yours’.

Difficult, fragmented and curiously metallic, Merchandise relay their subjective experience of modernity on this album. It’s strangely perverse and cynical, by turns encouraging multiple listens, or making you feel like you need a break. Foremost though, it’s a beautiful album, and it’s the sound of a band realising they can finally do anything they want with sound.

8/10

Words: Tim Hakki

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