Our NoiseThe Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label that Got Big and Stayed Small

A captivating history of Merge that doubles as a history of indie music's last 20 years
When Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance founded Merge Records 20 years ago, only a compulsive gambler would have bet on the tiny North Carolina label to make it big. But as this engaging oral history makes clear, they outlasted some and out-indied others by sticking to their guns, running a solid business and sticking around long enough to let lightning strike.

Compiled by journalist John Cook with input from McCaughan and Ballance, Our Noise doubles as a history of Superchunk, who became the label's flagship band when they decamped from Matador, a move that cemented Merge's transition from regional chronicler to full-service record label. Although it's hardly a sordid tell-all — Merge bands aren't much for Hammer of the Gods-style debauchery — the book doesn't shy away from detailing the low points, like the breakup of McCaughan and Ballance's romantic relationship, whose attendant drama fed into Superchunk's darkest album, Foolish. There are the expected highs, as well: The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and the explosive popularity of The Arcade Fire, who took the onetime bedroom concern to the second spot on the Billboard charts. That this happens against the backdrop of plummeting major-label fortunes only underlines the wisdom of Merge's approach, which has always been to sign adventurously and spend conservatively. (Ironically, their model in that respect was Cory Rusk's Touch and Go, who was forced to shutter his distribution business as the book went to press.) It's not surprising, though it is telling, that as the story moves into the 21st century, Merge's roster begins to fill with former major-label bands like Imperial Teen.

The book's most heartfelt passages are those devoted to the bands that never quite broke through. In Merge's official history, Butterglory and East River Pipe are as crucial as Lambchop and M. Ward. By telling the story of the overlooked as well as the overhyped, Our Noise expands beyond the chronicle of one label's fortunes, and blossoms into a capsule history of the last 20 years in independent music.