Merge Records

CD / digipak (blue foil) + poster insert.
Standard black vinyl LP is jacket (blue foil) + full album download coupon.

Here's the deal. In 2012, people loved Silver Age (to a degree that surprised me, pleasantly), likewise Beauty & Ruin in 2014 (despite the heaviness of the subject matter, which I thought might be a bit alienating... apparently not. Another pleasant surprise.).

But PATCH THE SKY is the darkest one. After the Letterman performance in February 2015 where 'dust fell from the rafters,' it would have seemed logical to go the punk rock route'an entire album of two minute songs'but that wasn't where my soul was at. I withdrew from everyday life. I wrote alone for six months. I love people, but I needed my solitude.

The search for my own truth kept me alive. These songs are my salvation. I've had a solid stretch of hard emotional times, and thanks for the condolences in advance. I don't want to go into the details'more death, relationships ending, life getting shorter'because they're already in the songs. Just listen and see if you can fit yourself into my stories. The words make you remember. The music makes you forget. But PATCH THE SKY is also the catchiest one.

I always aim for the perfect balance of bright melodies and dark stories. I've used this juxtaposition for years. This time, I've tuned it to high contrast. The first side of the album is generally simple and catchy. The second side is heavier in spirit and tone. Opposing forces and properties. I love both sides of PATCH THE SKY.

At the core of these songs is what I call the chemical chorus'you hear it once and your brain starts tingling. The heart rate picks up. It gets worse'you know it's coming again and you can barely stand the anticipation. Then, the beautifully heartbreaking bridge appears, and you're all set up'hooked for life. Music is an incredibly powerful drug. I want to be your drug dealer. I have what you need. --Bob Mould

Tracklisting:
Side A:
Voices in My Head
The End of Things
Hold On
You Say You
Losing Sleep
Pray For Rain

Side B:
Lucifer and God
Daddy's Favorite
Hands Are Tied
Black Confetti
Losing Time
Monument

The cliché that circulated after the 2016 election foretold a new artistic golden age: Artists would transform their anger and anxiety into era-defining works of dissent in the face of authoritarianism.

Yet Bob Mould calls his new album Sunshine Rock.

It's not because Mould'whose face belongs on the Mount Rushmore of alternative music'likes the current administration. His decision to 'write to the sunshine,' as he describes it, comes from a more personal place - a place found in Berlin, Germany, where he's spent the majority of the last three years. Here Mould would draw inspiration from the new environments.

'Almost four years ago, I made plans for an extended break,' Mould explains. 'I started spending time in Berlin in 2015, found an apartment in 2016, and became a resident in 2017. My time in Berlin has been a life changing experience. The winter days are long and dark, but when the sun comes back, all spirits lift.'
These three years in Berlin would quite literally shed new light on Mould's everyday mindset.

'To go from [2011 autobiography] See a Little Light to the last three albums, two of which were informed by loss of each parent, respectively, at some point I had to put a Post-It note on my work station and say, Try to think about good things.'Otherwise I could really go down a long, dark hole,' he says. 'I'm trying to keep things brighter these days as a way to stay alive.'

That makes Sunshine Rock as logical a product of the current climate as any rage-fuelled agit-rock. Variations on the word 'sun' appear 27 times in five different songs over the course of the album's 37 minutes. To hear Mould tell it, the theme developed early.

'Sunshine Rock is one hell of a  way to wrap up the busiest decade of my career,' he shares. 'The autobiography, the Disney Hall tribute show, reissues of several albums from my catalogue, three current rock band albums, several world tours, and now this new album ' I'm humbled and grateful to still be making new music while celebrating my lifetime songbook.'

Tracklisting:
1. Sunshine Rock
2. What Do You Want Me to Do
3. Sunny Love Song
4. Thirty Dozen Roses
5. The Final Years
6. Irrational Poison
7. I Fought
8. Sin King
9. Lost Faith
10. Camp Sunshine
11. Send Me a Postcard
12. Western Sunset

Release Date: 08/02/2019

Ex Hex is a power trio hailing from Washington, DC.

With Wild Flag on hiatus, Mary Timony (Autoclave, Helium) needed a new outlet, so she retreated to her basement and started writing. To her surprise, the songs came easily and the hooks practically wrote themselves. Mary found Laura Harris and they hit it off immediately.

The pair played together for a couple of months in a tiny carpet-lined practice space shared with half a dozen hardcore bands and what appeared to be the better part of a B.C. Rich Mockingbird. In walked Betsy Wright from the wilds of Virginia.

She and Mary have similar tendencies, both defaulting to denim and The Voidoids. Betsy is a performer and an ace piano player, and before long, she was slinging a cherry SG as the third member of Ex Hex.

The group played a handful of shows and a couple of months later, in the spring of 2014, headed into the studio. Working furiously, they recorded over the span of two weeks in North Carolina with Mitch Easter (Let's Active) and in the basement of Mary's home with frequent collaborator Jonah Takagi.

What results is Ex Hex Rips, twelve songs about underdogs, guys stealing your wallet, schoolyard brawls, and getting bent. The record happens pretty quickly, so don't blink.

'a fun-as-hell supercharged take on Ramones punk and Cheap Trick power-pop, direct and catchy beyond belief' 'STEREOGUM

'While the song's reminiscent of Wild Flag's rollicking material, it simultaneously holds its own as a sizzling and energetic little rocker.' 'CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND, on 'Don't Wanna Lose'

Tracklisting:
1. Don't Wanna Lose
2. Beast
3. Waste Your Time
4. You Fell Apart
5. How You Got That Girl
6. Waterfall
7. Hot and Cold
8. Radio On
9. New Kid
10. War Paint
11. Everywhere
12. Outro

Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard–led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club.

Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company’s jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band.

With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope’s sound quicker and more instinctual than before. “Ross is from Sheffield, which has an edgier, more industrial vibe than London,” Grunhard explains. “He hears things differently than us, is more grounded in rave and grungier sounds, and knew when to add drums or push the instrumentation more. It was very different for us, but it lends itself to where Ibibio Sound Machine is going.”

In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way.

As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that’s thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno’s otherworldly voice and PK Ambrose’s throbbing bass driving through a kaleidoscopic array of house, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco, bangers and ballads, making an argument for unity that begins on the dancefloor. “We are the places we grew up, the places we’ve been, and the people we’ve met along the way,” Williams says. “Hopping around the globe, we’ve found that people are fundamentally the same they’re people. Opposing sides push and pull, but there is an alternative to war, violence, and suffering.” Lead single “Got to Be Who U Are” literally globetrots, name checking locales across the world that would feel disparate were it not for how well-traveled they are.

Eno growing up in the musical melting pot of the Ibibio region of Nigeria and Max being a conservatory-trained musician from Australia, one could call their meeting in London and formation of Ibibio Sound Machine predestined. “Mama Say” and “Let My Yes Be Yes” touch themes of female empowerment. They’re indicative of the band’s depth as they push further into the electronic; “Mama Say” hits notes of electropop while “Let My Yes Be Yes” fuses electro to Afrobeat. Ibibio Sound Machine have always imbued their music with political consciousness, and the light that shines through in Williams’ vocals and voice has never felt more necessary.

The sound of Pull the Rope, then, is hope in darkness, bliss in spite of bleakness. Once again, Ibibio Sound Machine are here to provide the soundtrack to the best night of your life, and the better world to come. 

Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Pull the Rope 
2. Got to Be Who U Are 
3. Fire 
4. Them Say 
5. Political Incorrect 

Side B 
6. Mama Say 
7. Let My Yes Be Yes 
8. Touch the Ceiling 
9. Far Away 
10. Dance in the Rain

Few copies in stock with minor wear on sleeves, pictures can be sent upon request.

Pull the Rope, the new record by Ibibio Sound Machine, casts the Eno Williams and Max Grunhard–led outfit in a new light. The hope, joy, and sexiness of their music remain, but, further honing the edge of their acclaimed 2022 album Electricity, the connection they aim to foster has shifted venues from the sunny buoyancy of a sunlit festival to a sweat-soaked, all-night dance club.

Williams and Grunhard attribute this shift to a matter of collaborators, recording Pull the Rope with Sheffield-based producer Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, M.I.A.) over the course of two weeks. The way the pair wrote songs changed significantly rather than Eno penning lyrics to music generated by Max and company’s jamming, Orton started with Eno and Max writing together before adding the band.

With less time in the studio and a new way of considering how they built songs, the duo found making decisions about Pull the Rope’s sound quicker and more instinctual than before. “Ross is from Sheffield, which has an edgier, more industrial vibe than London,” Grunhard explains. “He hears things differently than us, is more grounded in rave and grungier sounds, and knew when to add drums or push the instrumentation more. It was very different for us, but it lends itself to where Ibibio Sound Machine is going.”

In melding their songwriting process, Grunhard and Williams have, impossibly, pulled the trick of making Ibibio Sound Machine a tighter band than ever before, building out from their core in a way that highlights the electrifying group of musicians they play with. Rather than recording with the full band in the room, Pull the Rope was sculpted, elements added and shaped by Grunhard, Williams, and Orton along the way.

As a result, Pull the Rope is a nimble, sleek machine that’s thrilling from the first note of the opening title track, Eno’s otherworldly voice and PK Ambrose’s throbbing bass driving through a kaleidoscopic array of house, post-punk, funk, Afrobeat and disco, bangers and ballads, making an argument for unity that begins on the dancefloor. “We are the places we grew up, the places we’ve been, and the people we’ve met along the way,” Williams says. “Hopping around the globe, we’ve found that people are fundamentally the same they’re people. Opposing sides push and pull, but there is an alternative to war, violence, and suffering.” Lead single “Got to Be Who U Are” literally globetrots, name checking locales across the world that would feel disparate were it not for how well-traveled they are.

Eno growing up in the musical melting pot of the Ibibio region of Nigeria and Max being a conservatory-trained musician from Australia, one could call their meeting in London and formation of Ibibio Sound Machine predestined. “Mama Say” and “Let My Yes Be Yes” touch themes of female empowerment. They’re indicative of the band’s depth as they push further into the electronic; “Mama Say” hits notes of electropop while “Let My Yes Be Yes” fuses electro to Afrobeat. Ibibio Sound Machine have always imbued their music with political consciousness, and the light that shines through in Williams’ vocals and voice has never felt more necessary.

The sound of Pull the Rope, then, is hope in darkness, bliss in spite of bleakness. Once again, Ibibio Sound Machine are here to provide the soundtrack to the best night of your life, and the better world to come. 

Tracklisting:
Side A
1. Pull the Rope 
2. Got to Be Who U Are 
3. Fire 
4. Them Say 
5. Political Incorrect 

Side B 
6. Mama Say 
7. Let My Yes Be Yes 
8. Touch the Ceiling 
9. Far Away 
10. Dance in the Rain

Originally released in 1996, Foolish turns 25 in 2019. Special 25^th anniversary edition LP. LP is black vinyl in uncoated jacket with foil stamp detail+ LP3 coupon. 

From Mac McCaughan: Our original idea for an all-acoustic album was for it to be a selection of songs from all our albums, played in the style of an acoustic performance in a record store or a radio station, which we have done quite a bit of over the years (and documented on the first of our “Clambake” series in 2001).

But with 2019 being the 25th anniversary of the Foolish album, it seemed weirder and more interesting to record an acoustic version of one whole album. I didn’t want this to sound like “acoustic demos recorded 25 years after the fact” or a band trying to “rock out” except on acoustic guitars, though to be fair we do some rocking out.

Once we got into the process of learning how to play the songs on acoustic guitars—some of which we had never performed at all—it made sense to make this record its own thing altogether. When Foolish came out, people kind of freaked out that all the guitar sounds weren’t as distorted as they had been, and it was treated as a radical departure from what we had been doing. Which is funny listening to the original album now because it pretty much sounds like our other records.

But I started thinking about the acoustic version of the album as “what Foolish would have sounded like if it were as different as people acted like it was.” So—we have guests, we have strings, we have piano, we have a saxophone! The songs themselves, extracted from the drama of the moment and what people wanted to write about then, are more applicable to Real Life than I thought they would be.

Without the embarrassing angst of the 25-year-old, they are just songs about transitions, holding grudges or trying not to, letting go of things that aren’t healthy, moving through difficult situations and relationships and trying to be “normal” in the course of all that, even though there’s no such thing.

We are lucky to have Allison Crutchfield, Matt Douglas, Peter Holsapple, Owen Pallett, and Jenn Wasner lend their great talents to the record and also lucky that Jon has an arsenal of small bells and a vibraslap.

Acoustic Foolish recorded live by John Plymale at Overdub Lane Strings by Owen Pallett on “Like a Fool” & “In a Stage Whisper”. Guest vocals by Allison Crutchfield (of P.S. Eliot, Swearin’) on “The First Part” Guest vocals by Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) on “Keeping Track” Piano by Peter Holsapple (of the dB’s) on “Stretched Out” & “Driveway to Driveway” Saxophone by Matt Douglas (of the Mountain Goats) on “Saving My Ticket” and “In a Stage Whisper”…

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Like a Fool
2. The First Part
3. Water Wings
4. Driveway to Driveway
5. Saving My Ticket
6. Kicked In

Side B:
7. Why Do You Have to Put a Date on Everything
8. Without Blinking
9. Keeping Track
10. Revelations
11. Stretched Out
12. In a Stage Whisper

Remastered reissue includes: Digital Download of complete 1997 concert, full album download and new liner notes.

"Rough and tumble punk energy infused with a finely tuned pop subtlety" - Billboard

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Unbelievable Things
2. Burn Last Sunday
3. Marquee
4. Watery Hands
5. Nu Bruises
6. Every Single Instinct

Side B:
1. Song For Marion Brown
2. The Popular Music
3. Under Our Feet
4. European Medicine
5. Martinis On The Roof

Final copies of the US RSD 7' This was limited to 1,500. Singles are pressed at Precision to clear vinyl.

Cover art by Emma Kohlmann.

"Erasure (Acoustic)" features guest vocals by Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee)

The Clientele’s first new record in six years. Over The Clientele’s 32-year career, critics and fans have described their songs with words like “ethereal,” “shimmering,” “hazy,” “pretty,” and “fragile.”

Their singer, guitarist, and lyricist, Alasdair MacLean, has his own interpretation of the effect his music creates. “It’s that feeling of not being there,” he says. “What’s really been in all the Clientele records is a sense of not actually inhabiting the moment your body is in.” I Am Not There Anymore, regularly evokes what MacLean calls “the feeling of not being real.” Many of the songs were inspired by MacLean’s memories of the early summer in 1997, when his mother died, but also represent The Clientele pushing towards a new sonic frontier as a band, experimenting over the course of a three-year recording period.

Of this stretching out, MacLean says, “We’d always been interested in music other than guitar music, like for donkey’s years.” This time out, he and bassist James Hornsey and drummer Mark Keen incorporated elements of post-bop jazz, contemporary classical, and electronic music.

According to MacLean, “None of those things had found their way into our sound other than in the most passing way, in the faintest imprint.” With those elements in the foreground, I Am Not There Anymore reasserts The Clientele’s standing among the great stylists of pop music, deftly shifting from image to image, mood to mood, in a way that feels both new and classically them. 

Tracklisting: 
Side A
1. Fables of the Silverlink 
2. Radial B 
3. Garden Eye Mantra 
4. Segue 4 (iv) 
5. Lady Grey 

Side B 
6. Dying in May 
7. Conjuring Summer In 
8. Radial C (Nocturne for Three Trees) 
9. Blue Over Blue 
10. Radial E 

Side C 
11. Claire's Not Real 
12. My Childhood 
13. Chalk Flowers 
14. Radial H 
15. Hey Siobhan 

Side D
16. Stems of Anise 
17. Through the Roses 
18. I Dreamed of You, Maria 
19. The Village Is Always on Fire

2LP is yellow vinyl cut 45 RPM in gatefold jacket + download. CD Digi.

Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker.

Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are. “On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.”

The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. “We often make a record and then bring in some guests who flesh out the textures,” Darnielle says. “And for this one, it was very much like a pack mentality. That sort of seemed to proceed from the songs.”

One new face was that of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, recommended to Darnielle by his manager as a producer who could help nurture the rougher edged sound these songs requested. “We met up and hit it off. She’s a great guitarist. It was kind of just a lark, to see what would happen, and it was totally great.” Running narrative themes are not new to Mountain Goats projects, especially in recent years, be it the pro wrestlers of 2015’s Beat the Champ or the goths of 2017’s Goths. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed.

Bleed Out could be all one movie, from the opening training montage to the demise in the elegiac closing title track. Songs like “Make You Suffer,” “First Blood,” “Hostages,” and “Need More Bandages” do what they say on the tin, telling typically vivid, deliberately recognizable vignettes of desperate characters in no-win situations who plan on taking as many people down with them as they have to. But Darnielle sees these as unconnected stories that feel universal in their desire for justice, if not in their wanton bloodshed.

Anthems don’t get more straightforward or anthem-y than “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” tapping into an anger that’s easy to reach in 2022, even if the solutions aren’t. Few people think as much, or as well, about violence and its portrayal as John Darnielle. His recent bestselling novel Devil House (his third) is all about the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, though he is careful to downplay any parallels to Bleed Out beyond a natural attraction to terrible things as a coping mechanism. “That’s what catharsis is,” he says. “When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don’t have to be harmed by it that experience is really valuable. I think we’re reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us.” 

Tracklisting:
Side A
1 Training Montage 
2 Mark on You 
3 Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome 
4 Extraction Point 

Side B 
5 Bones Don’t Rust 
6 First Blood 
7 Make You Suffer
 8 Guys on Every Corner 

Side C 
9. Hostages 
10. Need More Bandages 

Side D 
11. Incandescent Ruins 
12. Bleed Out

Few copies in stock with minor wear on sleeves, pictures can be sent upon request.

2LP is yellow vinyl cut 45 RPM in gatefold jacket + download. CD Digi.

Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker.

Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are. “On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.”

The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. “We often make a record and then bring in some guests who flesh out the textures,” Darnielle says. “And for this one, it was very much like a pack mentality. That sort of seemed to proceed from the songs.”

One new face was that of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, recommended to Darnielle by his manager as a producer who could help nurture the rougher edged sound these songs requested. “We met up and hit it off. She’s a great guitarist. It was kind of just a lark, to see what would happen, and it was totally great.” Running narrative themes are not new to Mountain Goats projects, especially in recent years, be it the pro wrestlers of 2015’s Beat the Champ or the goths of 2017’s Goths. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed.

Bleed Out could be all one movie, from the opening training montage to the demise in the elegiac closing title track. Songs like “Make You Suffer,” “First Blood,” “Hostages,” and “Need More Bandages” do what they say on the tin, telling typically vivid, deliberately recognizable vignettes of desperate characters in no-win situations who plan on taking as many people down with them as they have to. But Darnielle sees these as unconnected stories that feel universal in their desire for justice, if not in their wanton bloodshed.

Anthems don’t get more straightforward or anthem-y than “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” tapping into an anger that’s easy to reach in 2022, even if the solutions aren’t. Few people think as much, or as well, about violence and its portrayal as John Darnielle. His recent bestselling novel Devil House (his third) is all about the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, though he is careful to downplay any parallels to Bleed Out beyond a natural attraction to terrible things as a coping mechanism. “That’s what catharsis is,” he says. “When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don’t have to be harmed by it that experience is really valuable. I think we’re reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us.” 

Tracklisting:
Side A
1 Training Montage 
2 Mark on You 
3 Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome 
4 Extraction Point 

Side B 
5 Bones Don’t Rust 
6 First Blood 
7 Make You Suffer
 8 Guys on Every Corner 

Side C 
9. Hostages 
10. Need More Bandages 

Side D 
11. Incandescent Ruins 
12. Bleed Out

Deluxe 3LP is limited edition & pressed opaque red (LP1 & LP2) + tracklight green (bonus 12'), all vinyl cut at 45 RPM. 2LP gatefold black vinyl + LP3.

The theme this time around is goth, a subject closer to my heart perhaps than that of any Mountain Goats album previous. And while John writes the songs, as he always has, it feels more than ever like he's speaking for all of us in the band, erstwhile goths (raises hand) or otherwise, for these are songs that approach an identity most often associated with youth from a perspective that is inescapably adult.

Anyone old enough to have had the experience of finding oneself at sea in a cultural landscape that's suddenly indecipherable will empathize with Pat Travers showing up to a Bauhaus show looking to jam, for example.

But underneath the outward humor, there is evident throughout a real tenderness toward, and solidarity with, our former fellow travellers'the friends whose bands never made it out of Fender's Ballroom, the Gene Loves Jezebels of the world'the ones whose gothic paths were overtaken by the realities of life, or of its opposite.

It's something we talk about a lot, how fortunate and grateful we are to share this work, a career that's become something more rewarding and fulfilling than I think any of us could have imagined. We all know how easily it could've gone the other way, and indeed for a long time did. Peter Hughes.

Tracklisting:
Side A:
1. Rain in Soho
2. Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds
3. The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement

Side B:
4. We Do It Different on the West Coast
5. Unicorn Tolerance
6. Stench of the Unburied

Side C:
7. Wear Black
8. Paid in Cocaine
9. Rage of Travers

Side D:
10. Shelved
11. For the Portuguese Goth Metal
12. Bands ..

Deluxe Bonus 12' only tracks (Selected Goths in Ambient)
Side A:
1. For the West Coast Dark Ambient Bedroom Warriors
2. Scaling the Well

Side B:
3. Vanishing Act
4. Grave Dust