Mercy Music

Nothing in the Dark

Homegrown pop-punk trio Mercy Music released its latest full-length album in September, now available on Wiretap Records. Comprising singer/guitarist Brendan Scholz, bassist Jarred Cooper and drummer Rye Martin, the band finds itself doing what it does best: anthemic, foot-stomping, antagonistic punk rock enmeshed with tried-and-true pop touchstones.

For its third LP, Mercy Music enlisted producer Cameron Webb (Motörhead, Alkaline Trio), sharpening the band’s rougher edges and honing in on its strongest assets—Scholz’s feverish vocals and ferocious guitar work, Cooper’s distinct bass lines and Martin’s fastidious percussion. Standout songs “Tell Me I’m Wrong” and “Time Well Spent” feel like mature, grown-up tracks for the band, which reflect Scholz’s lyrical direction.

The record, according to Scholz, is simply about adulthood—whatever that means for each listener. “Here’s to the future and the goodness it’ll bring/Buy a perfect house/Hang a tire swing/Here’s to the future/And all your little plans/We can paint the kitchen/Buy a few more plants,” Scholz sings with biting apathy on “Alright.” Sure, it takes the piss out of white picket fences and fuzzy Pinterest dreams, but that’s exactly what makes Mercy Music so honest and refreshing. Mercymusic.bandcamp.com. –Leslie Ventura

Jacob Smigel

If I Were Me

Jacob Smigel has a callous on the bridge of his nose. The just-turned-40-year-old serves as an emergency room doctor at a rural hospital outside Austin, Texas—and that means wearing an N95 mask during his shifts, which can be unpredictable to say the least. “You bit your tongue, you rolled your car off the highway, you have a bowel obstruction or you have coronavirus, you’ll see me in the ER.”

Born and raised in Las Vegas, the singer-songwriter left town in 2007 to pursue his medical dreams, but he says music never strayed far from his thoughts. “A lot of interesting ideas had come,” Smigel says. “But instead of grabbing those nuggets of inspiration and working them into something, I’d let them float by.” That is, until last December, when he took his longtime pals in Rhode Island folk-rock band Deer Tick up on an offer to head into their new Nashville studio and record Smigel’s latest batch of tunes—with Deer Tick’s quartet of seasoned instrumentalists backing him. “I’d always wanted to make a ‘real’ record in a studio with a band, instead of me playing simple parts,” he says. “The stars aligned, and I owe [Deer Tick] so much thanks.”

The result of that three-day session, album If I Were Me, sounds like the Smigel locals remember—the clear-voiced singer spinning stories both personal and invented; there’s even a smidge of his trademark “found sound” worked in. But with Deer Tick behind him, it sounds fuller, more muscular, whether he’s singing about cadavers (“The Library”), former Vegas bandmates (“Waste Your Life, Be an Artist”) or his own medicine/music duality (“The Shadow”).

Tune in to YouTube Live November 20 at 7 p.m. to hear live versions of the new material (follow @smigelmusic on Instagram for further details). Jacobsmigel.bandcamp.com, jacobsmigel.com. –Spencer Patterson

Same Sex Mary

Public Comment

In 2019, James Howard Adams, lead singer of local rock band Same Sex Mary, was elected as a Boulder City councilman. Now, Adams serves not just as a guitar-playing government official, but as his town’s mayor pro tem.

It’s no surprise, then, that the band’s latest release, an EP titled Public Comment, released on Election Day and on Adams’ birthday, is 20 minutes of no-holds-barred, politically charged rock ’n’ roll.

“Most of the songs had been written prior to me actually being elected, except for ‘New Normal,’ which was written in response to the pandemic,” Adams says. “As an artist, it’s been a hard balance, because I never really wanted to let the two [roles] bleed together, and then we decided to drop this. As an artist, my job is to speak out, but as a politician, my job is to listen. So I’m conscious of that, and I try to keep the two as separate as possible—to keep the rock ’n’ roll antics out of the public discourse.”

Despite that notion, keyboardist Tsvetelina Stefanova says the album is a reflection of both the current political climate and the band itself. The project’s title refers to the five-minute segment in which a person can speak publicly on political matters before a governing body. Not coincidentally, each track clocks in just under five minutes.

“All four of these songs are still relatively recent and represent the direction we’ve been going as artists,” Stefanova says. “Our art is reflecting what we think about and our reality, and we’ve become a lot more political and have become more aware as we’ve grown as individuals. We have a lot to say.” Samesexmary.bandcamp.com. –LV