Happy release day to Eleanor Friedberger! Her debut solo album, Last Summer, is available today on CD, LP, and digital download in the Merge store.

Eleanor Friedberger is not just the enigmatic mouthpiece of The Fiery Furnaces, one of music’s most interesting, dynamic and constantly exciting bands. In fact, Eleanor Friedberger is an exceptional songwriter herself, playing a variety of instruments and crafting the very sorts of choruses that made you fall in love with The Fiery Furnaces in the first place. She’s a lover of Led Zeppelin and Jorge Ben; she’s a fearless performer, as comfortable fronting a band as she is playing alone on a stage with an acoustic guitar; she’s one of the sweetest alto voices in music. Nowhere is all of this more apparent than on her very first solo album, Last Summer, out today on Merge.

Last Summer, which was recorded, well, last summer, was born out of Take Me Round Again, a collection of cover songs from the previous Fiery Furnaces album. Both Eleanor and Matthew did their own inspired versions of songs they’d written together for their last LP I’m Going Away. Matt’s were otherworldly affairs, while Eleanor’s were lo-fi and lovely, all recorded in her home, the sound of an artist kicking off her shoes, settling into a big comfy chair with an acoustic guitar, a glass of scotch, and a four-track. She enjoyed the experience so much she decided to move forward with recording songs she had written in her spare time, songs that hadn’t been included on any of The Fiery Furnaces’ nine incredible albums.

Eleanor Friedberger is touring this summer in support of Last Summer, including a couple of dates in New York with Deerhunter.

Watch videos for the tracks “My Mistakes” and “Roosevelt Island”!

Order your copy of Last Summer on CD, LP, or digital download today in the Merge store and receive a limited-edition "From the Desk of Eleanor Friedberger" notepad while supplies last!

Eleanor Friedberger on tour:
Jul 12 Washington, DC – Black Cat Backstage
Jul 14 Cambridge, MA – Lizard Lounge
Jul 16 New York, NY – South Street Seaport - 4Knots Festival
Jul 19 Toronto, ON – Horseshoe Tavern
Jul 20 Chicago, IL – Hideout
Jul 23 Seattle, WA – Capitol Hill Block Party
Jul 24 Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
Jul 26 San Francisco, CA – Hotel Utah Saloon
Jul 27 Los Angeles, CA – The Satellite
Aug 22 New York, NY – Webster Hall w/ Deerhunter
Aug 23 New York, NY – Webster Hall w/ Deerhunter

On October 11, 2011, Crooked Fingers will return to Merge with the release of Breaks in the Armor, available for preorder now on CD and LP in the Merge store. Preorders will ship to arrive on or around the release date. Each preorder will ship with a Breaks in the Armor poster while supplies last, and the first 100 posters will be signed!

Watch the trailer for Crooked Fingers’ Breaks in the Armor.

Eric Bachmann, who writes, records, and performs songs mainly under the name Crooked Fingers, lives in Athens, Georgia, these days, where he recorded Breaks in the Armor at The Bakery with Matt Yelton (live sound engineer for the Pixies) throughout the winter of 2010/2011, enlisting the help of Liz Durrett on backing vocals. It’s a cohesive and diverse set of songs with less adorned and more direct and affecting arrangements. Beautifully understated, artfully phrased, and ultimately a paean to perseverance, the album seems to suggest that the breaks in the armor are more important than the armor itself.

There’s an undeniable sense of community Bachmann has regained in returning to writing and performing as Crooked Fingers, working with Archers of Loaf and Merge Records again, and moving back to the southeast. In 2011, Archers of Loaf reunited, toured the US, and played on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and with the August 2011 reissue of their debut album Icky Mettle, Merge began a series of expanded re-mastered reissues of the band’s four studio albums. Over the course of the coming year, Bachmann will alternate between touring as Crooked Fingers and with Archers of Loaf, making the most of two distinct and rewarding modes of expression and performance. All of which seems to be exactly where he should be again.

Preorder your copy of Crooked Fingers’ Breaks in the Armor on CD or LP now in the Merge store.

Breaks in the Armor track listing:
1. Typhoon
2. Bad Blood
3. The Hatchet
4. The Counterfeiter
5. Heavy Hours
6. Black Candles
7. Went to the City
8. Your Apocalypse
9. War Horses
10. She Tows the Line
11. Our New Favorite

We are excited to announce that The Magnetic Fields will be returning to the Merge roster with a new album in early 2012!

Though that may seem like a long time to wait, there’s plenty to tide you over until then. Stephin Merritt, critically acclaimed songwriter and mastermind behind The Magnetic Fields, is set to release Obscurities on Merge on August 23. Obscurities is a collection of Merritt’s hard-to-find recordings dating back to his time on Merge Records (1994–1999) and prior.

Download “Forever and a Day” from Obscurities now!

Obscurities features 14 tracks in all, including five previously unreleased songs, all recorded prior to The Magnetic Fields’ seminal album 69 Love Songs. Three of the unreleased tracks hail from The Song From Venus, the unfinished science fiction musical written by Merritt and Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket. Also included on the record are five songs culled from various Merge-era 7” vinyl singles by The Magnetic Fields, along with two from Merritt’s guest vocalist-laden side project the 6ths, one from an audio book, one from the Oh, Merge compilation CD, and a track from a rare K Records cassette-only release.

Among the tracks on Obscurities is The Song from Venus’ “Forever and a Day,” a solo-acoustic ukulele-based love song reminiscent of 69 Love Songs’ “The Book of Love.” Also included on Obscurities is “The Sun and the Sea and the Sky,” a previously unreleased 69 Love Songs outtake. “This song didn’t go on 69 Love Songs because it wasn’t actually about romantic love,” Merritt points out. The album concludes with “You are Not My Mother and I Want to Go Home,” which originally appeared in the audio book version of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline for which Merritt composed the soundtrack.

In 1999, The Magnetic Fields’ three-CD collection (and now available as a 10-inch vinyl box set) 69 Love Songs established Stephin Merritt as one of this generation’s most talented songwriters. That breakthrough was preceded by a six-year collaboration between Merritt and Merge Records that yielded such indie-rock classics as The Magnetic Fields’ The Charm of the Highway Strip, Holiday, and Get Lost.

We are happy to welcome Stephin Merritt back to the Merge family with Obscurities, available on CD, LP, and digital download beginning August 23.

Obscurities track listing:
1. Forever and a Day (previously unreleased)
2. Rats in the Garbage of the Western World (The Magnetic Fields)
3. I Don’t Believe You (The Magnetic Fields)
4. Plant White Roses (Buffalo Rome)
5. Rot in the Sun (The 6ths)
6. The Sun and the Sea and the Sky (previously unreleased)
7. Yet Another Girl (The 6ths)
8. Scream (Till You Make the Scene) (previously unreleased)
9. The Song from Venus (previously unreleased)
10. Beach-a-Boop-Boop (The Magnetic Fields)
11. When I’m Not Looking, You’re Not There (The Magnetic Fields)
12. Take Ecstasy with Me (The Magnetic Fields)
13. When You’re Young and In Love (previously unreleased)
14. You Are Not My Mother and I Want to Go Home (The Gothic Archies)

On July 26, Polvo returns with brand-new music on their “Heavy Detour b/w “Anchoress” limited-edition 7-inch. Preorder your vinyl copy in the Merge store now and receive a demo version of “Anchoress” as a bonus!

Here the band offers artwork by In Prism’s Delicious Design League and music on “licorice-colored vinyl” that “might smell like baseball cards,” to borrow their own description. Recorded in North Carolina and mixed by Mitch Easter, “Heavy Detour” is taken from Polvo’s upcoming album.

Polvo formed in Chapel Hill, NC, in 1990–a place and period known for its fertile indie scene. The band released two full-length albums and two EPs on Merge Records, plus two full-length albums for Touch and Go before disbanding in 1997. Polvo, joined this time by drummer Brian Quast (Cherry Valence), reformed in 2008 and released the critically acclaimed In Prism the following year.

The “Heavy Detour b/w “Anchoress” limited-edition 7-inch is available now for preorder in the Merge store.

Richard Buckner and David Kilgour will team up for a co-headlining tour beginning August 16 in Los Angeles! Don’t miss this opportunity to see two legendary songwriters and guitar “gods” share the stage. Richard will also be playing a handful of solo shows at the end of July and in early September.

David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights recently released a live video for the title track off their latest album Left by Soft, which is available now on CD and digital download in the Merge store. David shared some details about the video and his one-of-a-kind guitar:

“We were playing at the Empire in Dunedin, an old bar that only holds abut 140 people and was made famous by the old Dunedin Sound-ers. The guitar I’m playing is a hybrid–the neck is off an oldish Epiphone acoustic, and the body was made by a guitar dude called Rob Scott. One weird thing about it is that the pickups sit on rails, so I can move them to whatever position/sound I want. It has the sound of mountains collapsing, especially at volume.”

Watch David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights perform “Left by Soft” live in New Zealand.

Richard Buckner’s new album Our Blood, which will be released on August 2, is available for pre-order on CD and LP now in the Merge store. While supplies last, Our Blood pre-orders come with a limited-edition “Don’t Blame Me I Voted for Richard Buckner” bumper sticker!

Richard Buckner & David Kilgour on tour:
* = Richard Buckner only
Jul 29 Chicago, IL – Schubas *
Jul 30 Milwaukee, WI – 3rd Annual Radio Summer Camp Music Festival *
Jul 31 Minneapolis, MN – Triple Rock Social Club *
Aug 16 Los Angeles, CA – Bootleg Theater
Aug 17 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Aug 19 Portland, OR – Bunk Bar
Aug 20 Seattle, WA – The Triple Door
Aug 23 Atlanta, GA – Smith’s Olde Bar
Aug 24 Carrboro, NC – The ArtsCenter
Aug 25 Arlington, VA – IOTA Club & Café
Aug 27 Brooklyn, NY – The Bell House
Aug 28 Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
Sep 09 Big Indian, NY – Truck Festival *
Sep 10 Big Indian, NY – Truck Festival *
Sep 11 Big Indian, NY – Truck Festival *

Merge Records will reissue all four Archers of Loaf studio albums, starting with their acclaimed 1993 debut album Icky Mettle on August 2.

Prefix Magazine argues that Icky Mettle is the Perfect ’90s Rock Record in this piece written by Matthew Fiander: “This is about representing a time and place, capturing just what made this sound and this period in a particular subset of rock music so damn compelling. Icky Mettle does all that not by sounding like every other record from the time, but by establishing its own unique, blaring fuzz that hits not just with volume, but with a rare force.”

Also, Eric Bachmann recently made a playlist of his new favorite artists for SPIN magazine. You can read about his picks here.

Re-mastered by Bob Weston and featuring new liner notes by Robert Christgau, Icky Mettle will come with bonus material including the entire Archers of Loaf vs. The Greatest of All Time EP as well as singles and b-sides from the Icky Mettle era. It will be available in stores beginning August 2 on CD, limited-edition blue vinyl, and digital download. Reissues of Vee Vee, All the Nation’s Airports and White Trash Heroes will follow next year.

Download “What Did You Expect” from an out-of-print Merge 7-inch included on the Icky Mettle reissue.

Singer/guitarist Eric Bachmann, guitarist Eric Johnson, bassist Matt Gentling, and drummer Mark Price formed Archers of Loaf in Chapel Hill, NC in 1991. Icky Mettle was the first of four studio albums for the band that seemed to personify what SPIN magazine deemed “a tremendously optimistic time in underground music, that 15-minute period in the early 1990s when it looked like indie rock really might take over the world.”

After a now famous “secret show” opening for The Love Language at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC last January, Archers of Loaf kicked off their first tour since the fall of 1998 with a sold-out show at the Grey Eagle in their hometown of Asheville, NC. A raucous set at the Sasquatch Festival over Memorial Day weekend followed and was captured by NPR Music. The band will perform multiple dates at smaller venues across the country in an effort to replicate the more raw experience for which they are famous.

Archers of Loaf made their late-night television debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon a couple of weeks ago. Watch the full Fallon episode where they performed “Wrong” on air, plus the web exclusive “Harnessed in Slums.”

Pre-order Icky Mettle on CD or limited-edition blue vinyl LP now in the Merge store to receive an exclusive download of live video from the Archers’ January 2011 show at Cat’s Cradle as well as a download of the re-mastered original album.

Listen to the band’s live session for KEXP and find information at their official website. Follow them on Facebook, too!

Archers of Loaf on tour:
Jul 22 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Jul 23 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Jul 24 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
Aug 05 Washington, DC – Black Cat
Aug 06 Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero Theatre
Aug 19 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Aug 20 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Sep 02 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Sep 03 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Sep 08 Portland, OR – Music Fest NW
Sep 09 Seattle, WA – Neumos
Dec 09 Minehead, UK – Butlin’s Holiday Center - ATP’s “Nightmare Before Christmas”

Last month, Arcade Fire visited the Sound Opinions studios in Chicago. Watch video footage of “We Used to Wait” and “Sprawl II.” Links to photos, audio, and a download of the session podcast are available on the Sound Opinions website.

Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs has been included on the Polaris Music Prize’s Short List of Canada’s 10 best albums, as has Destroyer’s Kaputt. The Polaris Music Prize gala will be held Monday, September 19, at Toronto’s Masonic Temple and will feature live performances by some of this year’s Short List nominees. It will be webcast live on MuchMusic.com and broadcast on MuchMusic on Saturday, September 24, at 10 p.m. and midnight EST. The gala will also air on MusiquePlus at a date and time to be announced.

Previous Polaris winners have been Final Fantasy, Patrick Watson, Caribou, Fucked Up, and Karkwa.

The Suburbs Deluxe Edition CD+DVD is in stores on August 2, but you can preorder your copy now in the Merge store. The Suburbs is available now on CD, double-LP, and digital download.

The Music Tapes’ new digital EP Purim’s Shadows is available in the Merge store and from all your favorite digital outlets. Also, exclusively in the Merge store, the Purim’s Shadows EP comes with a special limited-edition Music Tapes kazoo, a bonus track, and a special surprise from Julian Koster himself.

This Saturday, July 16, Julian will be playing saw while people ride the giant calliope organ at the Paragon Carousel at Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts. The carousel won a historic preservation grant several years ago, and Julian says, “It’s looking incredible, and the mechanical organ is newly restored and absolutely amazing!” So if you’re in the area, be sure to visit on Saturday. Julian plays at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The Music Tapes have also just announced tour dates opening for The Olivia Tremor Control!

Order the digital download of Purim’s Shadows in the Merge store to get your bonus goodies!

The Music Tapes on tour:
# = w/ The Olivia Tremor Control
Jul 16 Hull, MA – Paragon Carousel at Nantasket Beach (Julian solo)
Aug 28 Albany, NY – Restoration Festival - St. Joseph’s Church
Aug 31 Austin, TX – Mohawk #
Sep 05 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall #
Sep 08 Seattle, WA – The Vera Project #
Sep 09 Portland, OR – MFNW - Someday Lounge #
Sep 12 Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theater #
Sep 13 Chicago, IL – Bottom Lounge #
Sep 14 Columbus, OH – Wexner Center for the Arts #
Sep 15 Pittsburgh, PA – The Warhol at New Hazlett Theater #
Sep 16 Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace #
Sep 17 Montréal, QC – Il Motore #
Sep 19 Allston, MA – Brighton Music Hall #
Sep 21 New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge #
Sep 23 Philadelphia, PA – UPenn Rotunda - SPEC Jazz & Grooves’ Fall Concert #

Gary from The Ladybug Transistor was recently on a solo tour of Spain and performed “Oh Cristina” from Clutching Stems on a Spanish beach with help on guitar from Darren Hanlon.

Watch Gary perform “Oh Cristina” live in Spain.

Order Clutching Stems now on CD or digital download in the Merge store!

The Ladybug Transistor on tour:
July 12 Cincinnati, OH – Mayday (FREE SHOW!)
July 15 Baltimore, MD – Ottobar
July 16 Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
July 17 Charlottesville, VA – The Southern
Sept 06 Los Angeles, CA – Satellite
Sept 07 Santa Barbara, CA – Muddy Waters
Sept 08 San Francisco, CA – The Hemlock Tavern
Sept 09 Portland, OR – Musicfest NW
Sept 10 Seattle, WA – The Comet Tavern

The Rosebuds recently released their new album Loud Planes Fly Low and are in the midst of a mega summer tour, including shows opening for Bon Iver. Don’t miss them!

Watch the video for “Woods” now!

The band visited KEXP for a live in-studio performance and interview this past Saturday. Listen to an archive of their session at KEXP.org.

You can order The Rosebuds’ new album Loud Planes Fly Low on CD, LP, and digital download now in the Merge store.

The Rosebuds on tour:
# = w/ Bon Iver
July 12 Vancouver, BC – Media Club
July 14 Boise, ID – The Neurolux
July 15 Salt Lake City, UT – Urban Lounge
July 16 Denver, CO – Hi-Dive
July 19 Minneapolis, MN – 7th Street Entry
July 20 Eau Claire, WI – House of Rock
July 21 Madison, WI – UW Union Terrace
July 22 Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theater #
July 23 Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theater #
July 24 Chicago, IL – Chicago Theatre #
July 25 Indianapolis, IN – Murat Theatre #
July 27 Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium #
July 28 Atlanta, GA – Cobb Energy PAC #
July 29 Raleigh, NC – Raleigh Amphitheater #
July 30 Richmond, VA – The National #
Aug 01 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club #
Aug 02 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club #
Aug 03 Upper Darby, PA – Tower Theatre #
Aug 05 Boston, MA – House of Blues #
Aug 06 Holyoke, MA – Mountain Park #
Aug 08 Toronto, ON – The Sound Academy #
Aug 09 New York, NY – United Palace Theatre #
Aug 10 Brooklyn, NY – Celebrate Brooklyn! #

Amor de Días, consisting of Alasdair MacLean, frontman for The Clientele, and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of indie-pop duo Pipas, recently teamed up with MAGNET to be guest editors on the website. Visit MagnetMagazine.com to enjoy their posts, and check out their MAGNET Q&A to learn more about the duo.

The band also debuted their new video for “Wild Winter Trees” recently. The band toured North America with Damon and Naomi in support of their debut album Street of the Love of Days, available now on CD and LP in the Merge store.

Watch the video for “Wild Winter Trees” now!

The video for “Wild Winter Trees” was directed by Mikhaël Hers, who has directed three short films including Charell and Primrose Hill, official selections of the International Critic’s Week (Cannes) in 2006 and 2007, respectively. He featured a couple Clientele songs in a film called Memory Lane, his first feature-length, which was presented at the 2010 Locarno Film Festival. After the band saw the premiere, they thought it only perfect for him to direct the video for this single. The images work as an analog to the lyrics of the song, but deepen and focus its ideas of innocence lost and time passing.

Amor de Días’ Street of the Love of Days is available on CD, LP, and digital download in the Merge store.

The debut self-titled album from Wild Flag, the 4-piece Portland, OR- and Washington, DC-based rock group including Carrie Brownstein, Mary Timony, Rebecca Cole and Janet Weiss, will be in stores on September 13 and is available for preorder now in the Merge store. Featuring members of Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Helium, the Minders and Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks to name just a few, Wild Flag premiered with a tour of small west coast rock clubs in the fall of 2010.

While all the members have known each other and played together in various projects for well over a decade, Wild Flag first came together in 2009 to write and perform the score for the critically acclaimed Lynn Hershman Leeson documentary !Women Art Revolution. After working together with such ease in the studio, the quartet decided to continue writing and recording as a working unit. The group spent months playing together, figuring out dynamics and working the songs out in a live context, before finally recording their debut album at Sacramento’s The Hangar with engineer Chris Woodhouse in April of 2011. All of the songs were performed live save for the vocal tracks.

Stream the album track “Romance”!

Wild Flag is touring North America throughout the summer and fall, including a date opening for Sonic Youth at Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Waterfront on August 12.

You can find Wild Flag on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.

Pre-order Wild Flag now on CD or LP in the Merge store.

Wild Flag on tour:
July 22 Chicago, IL – Subterranean
July 23 Chicago, IL – Wicker Park Festival
Aug 12 Brooklyn, NY – Williamsburg Waterfront w/ Sonic Youth
Oct 03 Minneapolis, MN – Varsity Theatre
Oct 04 Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
Oct 05 Kansas City, MO – Record Bar
Oct 07 Champaign, IL – High Dive
Oct 09 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
Oct 10 Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
Oct 11 Toronto, ON – Lee’s Palace
Oct 14 Boston, MA – Paradise
Oct 19 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer
Oct 20 Washington, DC – Black Cat
Oct 21 Carrboro, NC – Cat’s Cradle
Oct 22 Athens, GA – 40 Watt
Oct 24 Birmingham, AL – Bottletree
Oct 26 New Orleans, LA – One Eyed Jacks
Oct 29 Austin, TX – Emo’s
Oct 31 Tempe, AZ – Rhythm Room
Nov 01 San Diego, CA – Casbah
Nov 02 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
Nov 03 Los Angeles, CA – Troubadour
Nov 04 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Nov 05 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
Nov 07 Arcata, CA – Humboldt State
Nov 09 Portland, OR – Doug Fir
Nov 10 Portland, OR Doug Fir
Nov 11 Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
Nov 12 Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret

Wye Oak will make their late-night television debut on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on Monday, July 18! The show starts at 12:25 a.m. ET, so stay up late or set your DVRs!

Wye Oak announced some live dates with Explosions in the Sky and have now extended the tour to include dates with Yo La Tengo and The National. Also, NPR just announced its 25 favorite albums of the year (so far) and included Wye Oak’s Civilian.

Of Civilian, NPR’s Jacob Ganz wrote: “I know my thoughts, but I can hide them,” Jenn Wasner sings in the title track to Wye Oak’s third and best album. Control, and the loss of it, seems to be an almost obsessive concern for the Baltimore duo, and on Civilian, Wasner and Andy Stack tilt the balances between restraint and indulgence, clarity and obfuscation, independence and need. They go clear-eyed, quiet and scary; they thrash with joy. Wye Oak hits hard, even when it sounds like it’s breaking down.

Read NPR’s 25 Favorites (so far) and listen to the NPR music crew discuss their choices.

Wye Oak performed at the Sasquatch Music Festival at The Gorge outside of Seattle, WA, in May. NPR has their entire set streaming now at NPR.org/music.

Civilian is available on CD, LP and digital download now in the Merge store.

Wye Oak on tour:
# – w/ Yo La Tengo & The National
* – w/ Explosions in the Sky
Jul 15 Hartford, CT – Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
Jul 16 Northampton, MA – Iron Horse Music Hall
Jul 18 New York, NY – Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Aug 03 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
Aug 05–06 Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza
Aug 07 Happy Valley, OR – Pickathon
Aug 09 Seattle, WA – The Crocodile
Aug 12 Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre (w/ The Decemberists)
Aug 14 San Francisco, CA – Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival
Sep 06 Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion #
Sep 07 Philadelphia, PA – Academy of Music #
Sep 08 Philadelphia, PA – Academy of Music #
Sep 09 Boston, MA – Bank of America Pavilion #
Sep 28 New Orleans, LA – Tipitina’s *
Sep 29 Atlanta, GA – The Tabernacle *
Sep 30 Asheville, NC – Orange Peel *
Oct 06 Montreal, QC – Metropolis Theatre *
Oct 07 Toronto, ON – The Sound Academy *
Oct 08 Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Theatre *
Oct 10 Minneapolis, MN – First Ave *
Oct 11 Des Moines, IA – Val Air Ballroom *
Oct 12 Kansas City, MO – Uptown Theater *
Oct 13 Oklahoma City, OK – Diamond Ballroom *

Let’s Wrestle frontman Wesley Patrick Gonzalez has shown his prowess on the art front by the witty and unusual album and single artwork he has created for the band’s releases, as well as Home, the original comic book he created for the release of their new album Nursing Home.

Gonzalez has now created a website to collect and showcase all of his drawings and paintings. Visit WesleyPatrickGonzalez.tumblr.com now to check it out!

Watch Let’s Wrestle’s latest video for “In Dreams Part II” and find their new album Nursing Home on CD, LP, and digital download in the Merge store!

Beat the summer heat with a 14-song Merge sampler! Visit amazon.com now to download the entire set of songs for FREE!

As always, you can find new albums from all of these artists and more in our handy Merge store.

Free Merge Spring 2011 digital sampler track listing:
1. Ever Falling in Love (from Times New Viking’s Dancer Equired)
2. The Party Line (from Apex Manor’s The Year of Magical Drinking)
3. In Dreams Part II (from Let’s Wrestle’s Nursing Home)
4. Damn These Vampires (from the Mountain Goats’ All Eternals Deck)
5. I Don’t Care About Your Blue Wings (from East River Pipe’s We Live in Rented Rooms)
6. Civilian (from Wye Oak’s Civilian)
7. Diamond Mine (from David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights’ Left by Soft)
8. Blue Eyes (from Destroyer’s Kaputt)
9. Candyfloss (from Jonny’s Jonny)
10. Please Ask for Help (from Telekinesis’ 12 Desperate Straight Lines)
11. Come Visit Me (from The Rosebuds’ Loud Planes Fly Low)
12. House of Flint (from Amor de Días’ Street of the Love of Days)
13. Clutching Stems (from The Ladybug Transistor’s Clutching Stems)
14. Only Existing Footage (from The Extra Lens’ Undercard)

This week, Superchunk will be playing a free all-ages show in Brooklyn and appearing at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago! They also have a handful of other shows remaining this year, including a return to London and Atlanta after a 10-year absence, as well as their very first appearances at All Tomorrow’s Parties in Minehead, UK, and the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, NC! A few more dates could still be added, so stay tuned to the Merge tour page and follow Superchunk on twitter.

Tickets are on sale for all shows, and don’t forget to pick up the Here’s Where the Strings Come In reissue in the Merge store to receive exclusive acoustic demos of songs from the Strings sessions, as well as a free download of The Clambakes Vol. 5: Cup of Clams. Recorded on October 16, 2003, at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC, by an unknown recordist, the live Superchunk performance captured on Cup of Clams was edited and mastered by Mac with additional editing by Brian Paulson.

Also, get all three recent Superchunk reissues–Here’s Where the Strings Come In, No Pocky for Kitty and On the Mouth–bundled together at a special low price! Majesty Shredding is available on CD, LP, and digital download in the Merge store along with new tour posters from Brazil and Superchunk tote bags.

Superchunk on tour:
July 14 Brooklyn, NY – House of Vans w/ OFF! & Lemuria (FREE but must RSVP)
July 17 Chicago, IL – Pitchfork Music Festival - Union Park
Sept 8 Atlanta, GA – Buckhead Theatre w/ The Dodos & Times New Viking
Sept 10 Raleigh, NC – Hopscotch Music Festival
Dec 1 London, UK – Scala w/ Let’s Wrestle
Dec 2 Minehead, UK – All Tomorrow’s Parties curated by Jeff Mangum