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TRUE INDIE
With record sales declining precipitously
and major labels dishing out pink slips like
candy, some are eager to declare the music
industry, as we know it, dead. But for Mac
McCaughan and Laura Ballance, members of
indie-rock band Superchunk and owners of the
Durham, NC-based record label Merge, busi
ness ain't bad. As McCaughan says in the new
book Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
(Workman Publishing, 2009), "People may be
buying fewer bad records, but I don't see them
buying fewer good records."
Since its inception in 1989, Merge has
released good records in spades. In fact, the
label has garnered so much good will in the
music industry that it has chosen to celebrate
its 20-year history with this thoughtfully put
together volume. The book, written by music
journalist John Cook with McCaughan and
Ballance, documents the label from its humble
beginnings up through its current successes,
profiling, in succession, many of the bands
that helped establish Merge as a premier inde
pendent label.
With over 300 color and black-and-white
photographs of everything from performances
by the label's bands to reproductions of hand
written lyrics and other Merge bric-a-brac, Our
Noise is destined to grace the coffee table of
your friendly neighborhood music fen. But as
a document, the book is more than just a col
lection of pretty pictures. The story of Merge
Records is the story of Superchunk, which is
itself the story of McCaughan and Ballance's
relationship. The two dated in the early days
of Superchunk, and then separated while
remaining bandmates and label owners. A fair
portion of the book discusses the fallout of
the breakup and how the duo powered through
their personal issues to continue creating and
releasing music.
The majority of the chapters in Our Noise,
though, are devoted to bands in the Merge
family. Some of the groups featured include
Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, The Magnetic Fields
and Arcade Fire. These chapters function as
mini-biographies of some of the best bands
of the last two decades. Fans of Spoon, for
example, might be eager to read about the
various different styles of music the band
experimented in before settling on its current
sound. Because the book does focus on Merge,
the biographies primarily discuss the bands'
relationships with the label. But this focus
can yield interesting nuggets, such as the fact
that despite its almost universal popularity,
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has only sold
254,000 copies. Or that Arcade Fire, though
courted by numerous major labels, never
believed any of them could offer the band
anything that Merge couldn't.
Unlike some other books on bands or
labels, Our Noise is written interview-style.
The various chapters read like long interviews
with all of the members of the band, fens of
the band, people who worked with the band,
all with some occasional commentary by Cook
linking the quotations. The presentation can
be confusing, as sometimes the reader may
find himself having to turn back multiple
pages to determine a speaker's relationship to
the band. But the style does contribute to the
informal feel of the book,
and the more personal
interview style is especially
fitting for Merge, a label
that has a reputation for
forging personal relation
ships with its artists. Our
Noise reads like the people
themselves are sitting in a
room discussing the music.
As an insight into the
inner workings of a record
label, Our Noise is also illu
minative. In the early days,
Merge did not use written
contracts with its bands,
preferring instead to oper
ate on a handshake (how
ever, after getting burned
one too many times, the
label now uses quasi-stan
dard independent label con
tracts). Part of the label's
growing pains consisted of
learning hard business les
sons. Though McCaughan
and Ballance created a
record label solely to release
music they loved, eventually
they also needed it to afford
them a decent living and
pay the wages of their growing staff. However,
the appropriate balance between passion for
music and business acumen was not always
easy to strike. As McCaughan says in the
book, sometimes capitalism creates "tensions
between artists, consumers and businesses
that are not always easily squared."
Our Noise demonstrates that Merge is suc
cessful because—to many music fens—the
label's imprint signifies quality. That element
of consumer trust is often what's missing in
the major label world. Yes, the music industry
as defined by the actions of major labels is
probably dying. But as Cook writes, "Merge
was an outlier and holdout in a corporate-
dominated business; as the behemoths fail,
it could become a forerunner in the devolu
tion of the music business back to the sort
of small, competitive independent labels that
made rock 'n' roll possible." Congratulations to
Merge on a well-conceived and executed book,
and here's to 20 more years of success.
John Seay
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