Floridian noise-poppers and recent SPIN Breaking Out stars Merchandise are back with another one: the itchy seven-minute song “Anxiety’s Door,” the first sampling of the trio’s just-announced Totale Nite album, due this spring on the low-flying Night People label. That, of course, follows up the group’s fantastic 2012 debut, Children of Desire, which gave us the genuinely scary “In Nightmare Room” video and a great rooftop recording of “Become What You Are.” This latest song certainly doesn’t reinvent the band, but we weren’t looking for that anyhow. Instead, we hear singer Carson Cox executing his Mozzy croon over Echo and the Bunnymen’s dignified vision of post-punk.
Still, expect things to get stranger from here, as Cox promised a more experimental, jazz- and classical-informed sophomore LP in his November interview with SPIN. “It’s a really, really strange record,” he cautioned, presumably of Totale Nite. “I’ve never done anything like it. It’s easy to work on a pop record because you can understand the desirability of the music. But this is different, definitely a ‘smoke weed’ kind of record. I’m a little nervous.” It’s also possible that Merchandise decided upon a different tack following the surprise success of Children.
