Wiretap Records – 18 September 2020
“It’s not a fucking secret, I’m hiding under the bed…”
Boy am I glad Mercy Music isn’t just another Vegas kept secret. The band has recently released their third studio album Nothing in the Dark on Wiretap Records, featuring ten power driven, hella catchy and achingly sad songs while still clocking in just under a half hour with hooks so infectious that I was singing along without realizing by my second listen.
The album opens up with the track “Living With a Ghost,” a song that felt so familiar upon first listen that I could have sworn it was already on one of my playlists. I got that feeling throughout the album, a familiarity with the songs despite not even being all that familiar with Mercy Music’s catalog from the gate. There’s pop moments that happen unabashedly while still pinpointing and nailing, in the band’s own unique voice, all of the punk rock accoutrements we as an audience love to hear, like in the next track, “Tuesday.” This song stood out as the root example of what Mercy Music does best: wiring tight and sweet little electrical riffs and inserting them into every live outlet possible. And I’m not just talking guitars here, drummer Rye Martin takes the listener on a journey throughout these songs. There were points where my ear was following the drums so closely that’d I’d dangle myself from a steady 4/4 beat cliff before being hoisted up into air with a snare roll like a rip through time.
“Time Well Spent,” the fourth track, really put the Gin Blossoms in my mind while listening, like if Matt Skiba was in the band, and maybe he was listening to a lot of early early Jimmy Eat World at the time. It’s one of two ballads on the album, despite most of these songs garnering up a feeling of sadness. The title track, “Nothing in the Dark,” is an acoustic heart-wringer with one of the most grabbing hooks by guitarist, Scholz, “When I go out I’ll be sure that I go out alone/We can be two lonely people the way it was before.” There’s an ongoing theme of a cynicism and doubtfulness of self, of relationships, perhaps the approach one takes to relationships. It’s hard to pin any one song down thematically, but there are certainly musical themes recurring throughout if you’re listening closely. The album opens back up with the tracks “Alright” and “Overjoyed” which both absolutely could have been Gin Blossoms songs if you gave those guys a bunch of Red Bull. The album’s closing tracks, “To Live” and “Even If I’ve Lost” came as quickly as they went and I was left with no choice but to start again at track one because I wanted more.
Scholz has described Mercy Music as not quite fitting in as their brand of punk tends to color and span beyond the box the genre has long fashioned. Nothing in the Dark is a fine example of the work of punk musicians and punk fans not limiting themselves to one definition or style while unwedging themselves from the curated and limited space provided. The Mercy Music banner reads “Sad Bastard Power Pop” and they’re not wrong,’cause it’s just so right.
Favorite Songs: Tuesday; Nothing in the Dark; To Live
Favorite Bits: Every single guitar lick in “Tuesday”; the musical sorcery of Scholz to convince me I already knew the words to these songs before I did (and then actually did by the next listen); the ability to channel Matt Skiba’s essence without actually sounding like Alkaline Trio
