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

Jessica Thornsby

Merchandise’s second single from forthcoming album ‘For The Masses’ is a laidback slice of pop that forsakes big, brash hooks in favour of a rattling acoustic guitar that better showcases ‘Listen Up!’s twinkling synths and toe-tapping piano notes.

While initial impressions of ‘Listen Up!’ may be that’s it’s pretty enough, but distinctly underwhelming, its blissed-out rhythms work a slow magic on the listener, and you’ll gradually be won over.

Merchandise’s decision to pair downbeat lyrics with a pleasant, summery backing track, is an interesting one, and it’s what prevents ‘Listen Up!’ from sounding like just another piece of manufactured pop.

The slower groove of B-side ‘Lonesome Beauty’ is less accomplished. It’s a little too stripped-down, and lacks the pop shimmer that made ‘Listen Up!’ such a charismatic track. This is largely because Merchandise abandon the bright synths in favour of a more driving, electronic beat, which jars against frontman Brad’s breathy vocals and the scattering of sparkling synths. However, the sparser arrangement does showcase Merchandise’s talent for penning catchy pop lyrics.

’Lonesome Beauty’ does thankfully pick up the tempo towards the end, with the help of glimmering, ‘Listen Up!’-style synths.

Merchandise have a more sedate take on pop that, refreshingly, eschews the genre’s usual reliance on the huge, hook-packed chorus, and delivers something that works on the listener in subtler ways. This two-track single is hardly life-changing, but it’s a pleasant jaunt through indie-pop territory that’ll lift your spirits and, after all, that’s what pop is all about.

The Lovely Mark from Losing Today posted this fine review on his Myspace blog - click the poster to see the original!

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.

MERCHANDISE – LISTEN UP! – CITYSCAPE

Intelligently crafted indie pop, like The Smiths on a much more upbeat tip…

http://www.subba-cultcha.com/singles.php

Thanks to Alan Calvert who came down to Cityscape Presents night on 11th Oct and wrote this lovely piece in the Bolton News.