The eMusic Dozen: Mac's Underrated Merge Favorites

This record is a summer hit parade about getting old, growing up and examining life with an unsparing eye while somehow keeping the dance party going. It's an album you want to have on by the pool, even though it's reminding you that your days by the pool aren't as carefree as they once were. It's also a record about not growing up and being in a band, and lots of other things. But if you'd prefer not to ruminate, you can just crank it and lose yourself in songs like "do it better," the bittersweet "room with a view" and the saucy "it's now."

Following up a debut album (Suburban Light) that would be a greatest-hits album for most bands couldn't have been easy for the Clientele, but the albums that followed have all been fantastic explorations of a certain rainy English world. On God Save... the band went to Nashville and peeled back the blanket of reverb enough to let the songs gleam a bit more. It's a revelation, even if you already loved the band. A nearly perfect album. The newfound clarity brings the melodies of songs like the "Queen of Seville" and "No Dreams Last Night" to the fore, and puts a bounce in the band's step on "Here Comes the Phantom" and "Bookshop Casanova."

On the surface this is the Rosebuds disco move. But when the ball stops spinning, these are just great songs, like the ones that fill every Rosebuds record. Perhaps a little darker and more on the hungover side of things than Make Out, but you need a balanced diet or you'll get a headache! Some of the heavier moments here come from Kelly, who digs in on "When the Lights Went Dim," where Ivan brings the triumphant moves on "Cemetery Lawn" and the amazing New Order-ish anthem "Get Up, Get Out."

The longest running artist on Merge that's not called Superchunk, Kurt Wagner and his revolving cast of Lambchops have been massaging and prodding and refining their sound since the rambunctious debut "Nine" single, going down to a whisper on records like Is A Woman and always coming up with some deep listening in the process. Oddly enough, their most recent album is their most accessible, still featuring Kurt's trademark whisper and referential lyrical bent and a sturdy-but-delicate backing, but with some perfect pop moments like "Slipped, Dissolved, and Loosed" thrown in to let you know what you've been missing all these years. Get with it, America! This is your man, this is your band.

This is the heaviest of all Rock*A*Teens albums, the songs are woozy and weaving but inexorable and majestic even. I always imagine Chris Lopez belting these songs while coming down the winding staircase on the front cover in a sweaty tuxedo. The band repeats some choruses unttil you think Lopez's voice will lose the battle with the buzzing keyboards and guitars and drums but it never quite does. So many hits on here, but "Make It New Again" and "Please Don't Go Downtown Tonight" are great places to start.

From our first tour with Seaweed in '90, they were always bragging that they were a punk band -- specifically more punk than Superchunk. OK, they win, but how punk was Hollywood Records? Luckily, we got them back, and while all the energy from their first is here singles, Seaweed's true secret weapon is Aaron Stauffer's gigantic vocal hooks on top of Wade and Clint's dueling power chords on songs like "Thru the Window" and "Against the Sky." Yaos.

How does a guy who makes masterpieces not approach each album with the weight of having to make a masterpiece? Of course, he's David Kilgour of the Clean, a band I loved for 15 years before I even got to meet him and 18 before we got to release the Clean's Anthology on Merge. His solo records seem to float by with an ease all their own...light and beautiful and effortless but not insubstantial -- just classic music you could literally listen to the rest of your life. I could have picked any of them -- Feather in the Engine, the Far Now, this one -- because they're of a piece for sure. But each has its own atmosphere, and this one's "lost summer feeling" is particularly affecting.

After recording the string of incredible, ephemeral singles that would become Shining Hours In A Can, you would have forgiven F.M. Cornog for shutting down the hit factory in his Queens bedroom right then and there. But Fred didn't do that, and so we got East River Pipe's first proper album, Poor Fricky. Listening now,15 years later, this too sounds like a singles collection, from the sweeping statement of purpose "Bring on the Loser" to the sighing "Ah, Dictaphone" to the positively bouncy (for Cornog's world) "Hey, Where's Your Girl," covered so effectively by Lambchop on Thriller. These are tales of abandonment and dissipation set to warm, sweet, echoing guitars.

Butterglory was the first band that Merge signed on the basis of an unsolicited demo tape. They released 3 albums and a singles collection of charming VU-ish pop that we loved, and then Matt and Debby parted ways. We (Superchunk) were on tour somewhere, and Matt gave us a tape of the solo album he just made. It was this album, and we listened to it for the rest of the trip. Butterglory albums never hinted at the scope or emotional depth that Matt brings to this album, channeling Dylan and the Kinks and his own romantic disaffection through into an amazing set of songs.

Putting out a Versus record was something we had been considering for a long time. We finally hooked up for a couple of EP's and this, their lone full-length on Merge. You can identify the gait and guitars of a Versus song usually within seconds, and this record is a classic of their own genre. It's Richard and Fontaine effortlessly interweaving their vocal lines on top of layers of guitars, and Fontaine's melody carrying bass. The drums and guitars, recorded here by Larry Crane (of TapeOp fame), are thicker and heavier than on past albums, as showcased on the driving "Eskimo." They approach MBV-type mass on songs like "Said Too Much" and "Frederick's of Hollywood." Versus is playing shows again, and maybe working on a record -- hurrah!

When I first heard the Beatnik Filmstars, I thought they were a band made for Merge. They were British in residence and mannerisms, sure, but from the cramped bedroom recording-wise. They were equal parts charging pop and hiss. The Beatniks always packed a bunch of great songs into a short amount of time, and this record is no exception. My faves are "Wrong" and the bitterly rocking "Now I'm A Millionaire."

After the relatively straightforward (for Guv'ner, who were never that straighforward) album The Hunt, Chazzy (guitar & vocals) and Pumpkin (bass & vocals), joined here by Danny Tunick on drums, put together a deceptively casual-sounding art record, leading with a gorgeous instrumental title track and weaving a skewed path through fractured but chiming folk-rock epics like "Chereza," "Love the Lamp" and "Someone Else," and veering back towards simplicity with "Jealous Girl" -- the Lennon song, reconfigured -- and the hilarious garage romance "Coozwax." It's a twisting road and worth the trip.