You may have noticed that yesterday was the release date for the second single. Or, apparently not. You can see that we run a pretty tight ship here at Chris Merritt Industries! Apparently my self-imposed deadlines are more like guidelines. But then again, the Sugar single release has turned out to be much bigger and better than we even imagined. Along with starving and working and gigging and traveling, the trio has been working its collective butt off to finish this thing. The new release date is……..drumroll……..Monday!
First of all, there’s the new single, Sugar. Somehow, a crappy demo of this song leaked on to the internet a couple years ago, and it’s since been my #1 most requested song ever at shows. It hasn’t even properly been on a record, until Demos Of Nod, but even then it was that same little keyboard demo with me doing my best impression of David Bazan. Anyway, we’ve finally done it up proper; it really turned out to be more than the sum of it’s parts. Brett put awesome percussion on this thing. There’s lots of rad background vocals and Jacob put sweet melodic weird synth lines over his bass parts. The energy is just huge. In the years 1950-1999, Sugar would have been a huge radio hit. As it stands, it will tear up those internet radio charts OH BOY!
Then comes Favorite. Dustin and Al and me recorded this out in Salt Lake a few weeks back. This song fills my heart with hapiness. The Utah Trio was at it’s tightest when we recorded this, and we did 11 takes, which I’ve been painstakingly editing together for days now. This song and the performance is so strong that I think this might end up on the final record, but in a Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, screwed-up kind of way. Maybe Jacob will mix it to that next level of weird greatness, and Brett might add some bells and whistles. But for now, it’s a straight-up rock and roll track and I can’t stop listening to it.
There’s also a song called Pep-Pep. It’s this bizarre, chromaticy guitar song that I’ve been playing every night in bed as I go to sleep. I’m strangely addicted to it.
So along with Sugar and the two b-sides, Favorite and Pep-Pep, the new single release will also contain two rough-mixes of potential album tracks, Little Bird and Drug. Also included with the new single release will be every Tuesday Tape ever recorded!!! There will also be some of my crappy drawings as usual!!!! You’ll also get a video thank-you message and maybe a couple of other goodies. For a mere 5 dollars American, all of this is yours! Alternately, you can get your friend to email you the tracks which is free.
I figure there is only one real reason people pay for music these days; to support the artist. I think it’s beautiful and natural that people can get music and media for free now. I think that when people can afford it, they would usually rather support the artist, but it’s great that po’ folk can still feed their brains with succulent information.
And speaking of po’ folk, Brett and Jacob and I could really use some of that support I was talking about – we need every penny we can get to finish Virginia Is For Hoverers (Part II). It truly is turning out to be more than the sum of its parts. It’s a huge undertaking, though – we’re recording 20 songs and whittling them down to 10. It’s a group effort and we’re all working for hours a day on this thing and spending all our own cash on it. And that’s tricky to do because we don’t have any at all. Anyway, I say all that to say this: get your hands on this single on Monday. Download it from a friend. Start seeding a torrent file. And by all means, once you get your hands on it, email it to everyone you know. But if you have a regular job, and you can sacrifice eating your donut and coffee six instead of seven days next week, consider helping us finish this record. Buy the single, b-sides, and load of goodies for only a fiver.
I’m sure my landlord would appreciate it.
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