January 24 street date. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Clean's album "Modern Rock", it has been remastered from the original tapes by producer and engineer Tex Houston and preserves Hamish Kilgour's original artwork. "Modern Rock" crackles with spontaneous energy, as if The Clean - namely, Hamish Kilgour, David Kilgour, and Robert Scott - couldn't help but make music together whenever they were in the same room. Following their 1989 reunion tour and the 1990 release of "Vehicle", those opportunities were rare. Then, for nine days in April 1994, the stars aligned over Dunedin and "Modern Rock" bloomed into life. It's an album of easy charm by a band so attuned to guitar pop that they make the creation of their sonic universe seem easy, as if what you're being let in on is a long-running conversation between three masters at a point where all three are riffing off of each other, line by line and hook by hook. The reissue offers new and old fans of The Clean alike an opportunity to hear the band at a creative zenith, shining light on an era that, until now, has been the provenance of crate diggers and completionists. First time in print on vinyl since its initial release, and the first time "Modern Rock" has ever been available on LP in North America.
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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