AFTER THE END HOW TO
AFTER THE END CODE

With the disdain he holds for many of his peers (he hasВ declared other indie bands to beВ 'boring and stupid' and 'fucking babies, they want their diapers changing') and his seemingly infinite listВ of pre-rock'n'roll influences (from Henrik Ibsen to Disney's Fantasia), CoxВ clearly sees himself as indie-rock's last great outsider. 'Is it true love? Or is it heartache? Or the angel of death coming for a kiss?' he asks as the album reaches its conclusion.

AFTER THE END HOW TO

He now emotes with real soulfulness, and indeed the stripped-back final track, Exile and Ego вЂ“ which features a melody that elegantly dances into areas you least expect вЂ“ isВ extraordinarily moving.Д¬ox is an intriguing frontman: aВ tormented romantic struggling with the demands of young adulthood, yetВ not always sure how to articulate his feelings. But the real appeal lies in Cox'sВ vocals, which seem to have developed since those early Morrissey comparisons. Dave Vassalotti's electric 12-string guitar, reminiscent of early REM, combines with piano or organ (Life Outside the Mirror) and huge, echoing drums ( Green Lady) to provide the kind of otherworldly shimmer last heard on Echo and the Bunnymen's mid-80s albums. 'My main pursuit is beauty now,' he told the Guardian in 2013, and After the End isВ nothing if not wonderful-sounding. Cox seems more concerned with following his own individual vision. Yet to accuse Merchandise of being mere contrarians undersells them. Instead it was recorded at a new home, with Gareth Jones enlisted for mixing duties вЂ“ a producer whose CV includes working on such DIY-or-die polemics as Erasure's Wild! True, the crisp sound of After the End wasn't recorded at a fancy new studio on 4AD's dime, but neither was it laid down at the same grotty, drug-littered shack as previous Merchandise records. Merchandise may be named after a Fugazi song, but their DIY principles are slowly making way for pragmatism: they recently recruited their first manager, and handed a P45 to their drum machine in favour of a real, live drummer, Elsner Nino. So maybe After the End is one big attempt to rile the punks.

In their place come lots of 12-string guitar, a sparkling production and the foregrounding of Cox's emotive baritone. They've described it as a 'formal pop record': gone are the sprawling guitar workouts, saxophone squalls and tendency to interrupt one song with what sounds like another song entirely. Merchandise have now performed another about-turn with After the End, whose very title betrays their thirst for reinvention. If the punks did indeed hate Children of Desire вЂ“ a gloomy, post-punk record that recalled the first two Smiths LPs, had Morrissey and Marr ever possessed a fondness for 10 minute-long songs вЂ“ then it's hard to imagine what they will have made of Merchandise's moves since then: Total Nite in 2013 featured five songs of swirling feedback, lo-fi psychedelia, krautrock rhythms and jazzy interludes.

AFTER THE END CODE

It's probably stating the obvious to say that part of that code is that you don't jack it all in to form an indiepop band. Merchandise may never have been a punk band, but Cox and his bandmates were certainly once punks: they played in various hardcore and powerviolence guises in a scene known for its strict ethical code regarding DIY principles and rejecting the mainstream. 'The punks,' he told one journalist, 'will probably hate it.'

I n 2011, musing on how his former peers on the Tampa Bay hardcore scene might view the forthcoming Merchandise album, Children of Desire, frontman Carson Cox was not wildly optimistic.

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