June 24 street date. Merge Records is thrilled to reissue "Neurotica" by Redd Kross, the 1987 power pop and alternative rock opus celebrating 35 years in 2022. The original album is remastered by JJ Golden (Pearl Jam, Thee Oh Sees) and then paired with 12 unreleased demos rediscovered in the archive of original A&R guy Geoffrey Weiss. "Neurotica" could be viewed as a "This Is Your Life"-esque document of what brothers Jeff & Steve McDonald had been working toward creatively since starting Redd Kross in their Hawthorne, CA living room circa 1978. The songs quake with punk rock fury. And how could they possibly have shaken off the untamed energy of their early Red Cross years which laid a foundation for Southern California hardcore punk and DIY culture alongside bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Descendents? But fury is only part of their formula. To find the other parts, travel back to the 1970s, when the McDonald boys lived for nothing but Saturday morning cartoons, sugary cereal, bubblegum pop singles, Beach Boys LPs, Partridge Family TV specials, and the arena rock guitars of KISS and Cheap Trick. The double vinyl edition - the album on translucent turquoise, the demos on translucent orange - arrives in a slick gatefold jacket.
Merge Records was started in the summer of 1989, by Laura Ballance & Mac McCaughan, the same summer they formed the band Superchunk in Chapel Hill, NC. The first couple releases were cassettes (remember those?), by WWAX and Bricks, followed by the first Superchunk (then known only as "Chunk") 7" single. The vinyl 7" was the format of choice for the first 3 years of the label, with cash borrowed from friends to finance projects (including singles from Erectus Monotone, Angels of Epistemology, and more Superchunk) and bedrooms serving as Merge HQ until 1992, when the first Merge full-length release, Tossing Seeds by Superchunk, was released on CD, LP, and cassette. With this release Merge also forged a relationship with Touch and Go Records of Chicago, who have done an admirable job manufacturing and distributing the bulk of Merge's full-length releases since then. Since '92 Merge moved from one charming-yet-run-down office to another until 2001, when we finally made the move from Chapel Hill down the road to a fine old building all our own in historic Downtown Durham, NC. In 2004 Merge Records is celebrating its 15th birthday, and while our roster has changed, rotated, permutated and expanded over the last 15 years, the quality we look for in records as fans is still there in the music we put out on Merge. Thanks for listening!
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