Remo Drive - Mercy (New Vinyl LP)

Remo Drive, the longstanding project of brothers Erik and Stephen Paulson, want you to feel something. Following a six-year run of pristine emo-influenced rock 'n' roll records comes Mercy, the band's fourth album and third for Epitaph. It's the band's most lyric-focused offering to date, a record about reinvention, trusting yourself, and wearing your heart on your sleeve even when it's painful or vulnerable.

Sonically, Mercy is also a major departure for Remo Drive. It's less indebted to the emo and pop punk that foregrounded the duo's career and instead invested in thorny, baroque indie pop byway of Father John Misty and Fleet Foxes. It was produced by Phil Ek, a legendary Seattle-based indie rock producer who has previously worked with those two bands as well as the Shins and Band of Horses, among others. Remo Drive worked with Ek over the course of ten days. "It was refreshing to work with Phil," says Erik, "It made music feel like how it did when we were younger. He was like f*** it, let's go, let's have fun." Mercy is a study in intimacy, in being real with yourself, in entering an exciting new creative chapter where you are making the art you really want to make. That's where Remo Drive is today.