If you love yourself some lo-fi pop, (and really, what are you doing here otherwise?), you’re gonna be bowled over by the latest 7″ single from Merchandise. The band hails from the lazy tongued shores of the UK, and brings to mind a more emphatic and punchy answer to The Boy Least Likely To.

Two songs abound here: the bouyant “Listen Up!” and the slightly more melancholy “Lonesome Beauty”. It’s truly one of the most addictive singles that have ever graced the hallowed halls of RetroLowFi HQ, and we’re not just saying that because of the delicious looking white vinyl it’s pressed on, either.

Really. Seriously, take a listen to “Listen Up!” here.

Then buy it from Cityscape records!

The Devil Has The Best Tuna

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2009

Sunday Goody Sunday

Merchandise

Genre: Indie / Alternative / Pop

From: Bolton and Manchester,

United Kingdom

Bolton pure popsters Merchandise have a new single coming out towards the end of the month.

‘Listen Up’, the follow-up to the well received single ‘Sometimes’ (see video below) is a nice little taster for their forthcoming album ‘For the Masses’. However it’s overshadowed by the b-side (which is becoming an increasingly archaic term in these days of downloading) ‘Lonesome Beauty’ a seductive summer smoothie indebted to the seriously underrated Pale Fountains, Love’s ‘Forever Changes’, Burt Bacharach and The Lotus Eaters.

Showing their versatility the aptly named ‘The Sunday Song’, provided courtesy of the Devil, sounds like The Dandy Warhols if they’d been born in Bolton.

Go Try

MP3 – Merchandise – The Sunday Song

If anyone from the IFPI or Blogger is reading this track is linked direct from the Merchandise website

Go Visit

Merchandise – Myspace// Website

Label – Cityscape Records // Cityscape Records Myspace

I posted this review earlier as from the Sunday Experience, but now it’s been put up on Losing Today and it’s only polite to link!

Losing Today

Merchandise ‘listen up!’ (cityscape). Apparently there’s a full length looming on the horizon from these chaps entitled ‘for the masses’ which we must admit is proving to be something of a breath held anticipated thing over in our gaff, sadly there’s no announced street date as yet, however to placate ’the masses’ there’s this nifty little twin set to tuck into and keep the home fires burning. ’listen up!’ according to the press release attaching to this CD / vinyl set (pressed on white wax and replete with a badge I should add – how these lads love to treat us) is a ’tale of heartbreak and emotional torment told against a sparkling musical backdrop’ – couldn’t have put it better myself though as is our want we will add to that that this babe is braided by a hugely lolloping and deviously off set hook that’ll flatten you without so much as a by your leave, blending the summer glazed dimpled effervescence of Dodgy’s holiday time honey ’staying out for the summer’ with the less obvious tangy overtones of a post ’wake up’ Boo Radleys, drizzled with subtle west coast accents and a head turning sucker punching infectiousness ’listen up!’ fizzles with a quietly disturbing lo-fi feel good mellowness and an un-assumed pop prowess that once slyly shimmying past your defences will set up home in your psyche and ping around nonchalantly until summer fades. That said we are quite more than smitten by the flip cut ’lonesome beauty’ as it affectionately tumbles and teeters carrying in its wake memories of those classic era Kitchenware releases from the early 80’s, and though we here are all firmly at the mercy of winter’s icy grip this babe almost feels like a metrological calling card ushering in the oncoming spring season.

Mark Barton

:: Merchandise ::
23 February 2009 / Cityscape / 2 Trk CD
By Emily Slowlie

Brad B Wood and Conrad Astley sustain those immovable smiles as they prepare us for the summer with another dose of bright guitar pop. “Listen Up!” provides the kind of happy-feel-good music that the Lightening Seeds were so adept at serving up at regular intervals. The layered vocals and harmonies have the rustic-city-based-charm of Badly Drawn Boy, where the melodies shuffle between acoustic and electric guitars amid the plinked highlights of piano. Merchandise are unashamedly content with this kind of lightly whipped tunefulness and all that’s missing in this formula, is an absolute killer tune – I don’t think they’re far off serving it up either. They plunder a well trodden mine of music and they should, to their credit , exploit it