Merchandise, the post-punk band from Tampa, Florida, are back with their first new music in nine years. “You Shot Me Down (Single Mix)” follows the group’s 2016 album, A Corpse Wired for Sound, and it arrives via frontman Carson Cox’s new digital label, Symbol + Sound. Hear the track below.
Merchandise—the trio of singer Carson Cox, guitarist David Vassalotti, and bassist Patrick Brady—have been largely dormant since sharing A Corpse Wired for Sound and finishing their tour in support of the album in 2017. Vassalotti, in 2019, released the solo album Guitar Dream, and Cox launched Symbol + Sound in May, making Vassalotti’s Deep Space Willie his first release on the label.
“I’ve been working on our 6th Lp since 2019,” Cox shared in an update to fans. “It’s hard to say how long it should take to finish an album in the chaos of these past years but it’s coming soon, just not quite yet. All the same I wanted to share something, after a long time of radio silence.”
He continued: “This for the fans that after all these years still ask me for new music. Myself and my bandmates all live in different cities, we have different live now but i still have more to say with this project. It’s a lot harder to make anything work now as we all know but I don’t feel like I should let it stop me. I know music can still open hearts.”
Vassalotti added: “Merch ain’t dead, we’ve been slowly and steadily working on new material over the past seven years. This is just a taste. Much more to come (LP perhaps). Life gets harder, getting together with friends to be creative gets harder (esp w/ a thousand miles in between), but it’s still so satisfying to collaborate with my brothers on this project 💓.”
