Send "Mercy Mercedes " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Absolutepunk |
 After I saw Get Him to the Greek, my friend Matt and I were talking about how all of these Judd Apatow movies are hilarious. We sort of hashed it out and decided that the thing that made all of these movies so funny is that the writers must just sit around and come up with jokes....dozens of them. Then, they have one scene to shoot and about 50 jokes to choose from, but instead of actually choosing, they just use them all in rapid-fire succession, one after the other. The result is a rapid-fire, death-by-laughter scene.Anyway, how does this relate to Mercy Mercedes' newest full length, Believe It? Well, I would argue that the band just wrote a ton of really ridiculously catchy hooks, really charming and playful synth lines, and really, really cheesy guitar solos, then lined them up one after the other, rapid-fire style, throughout the entire album. The cavity-inducing "Drop Top" kicks things off, and upon first listen it is apparent that this has the makings of an excellent pop rock record. The genre has been ruined for me lately, with every single band writing the same album, blending into each other in a camouflage of terrible lyrics and little to no substance. Believe It stands out considerably from other albums of the same elk in 2010. In fact, aside from HelloGoodbye's Would It Kill You? and Marianas Trench's Masterpiece Theatre, there is no better pop release this year. After wholeheartedly enjoying my first few listens of Believe It, I tried really hard to criticize it harshly, to find all of its flaws and exploit it for the gimmicky music it is. Truth be told, some people may describe this album as gimmicky; it's got sky-high vocals, choruses so catchy that they'll have you dancing regardless of where you are, and like I said before, those incredibly cheesy guitar solos. It's supposed to be everything I dislike in a record, but Mercy Mercedes has crafted something here that is just plain better than most everything else the genre has offered us recently. It boggles my mind to hear this music and wonder why more bands can't write records just like this one....full text |
| Ramonosaurusrexx |
| When the current pop-rock scene is in tatters, the beacon that shines in the darkness is Mercy Mercedes‘ neon pop-iness. Yes, that line may have been a tad bit over-dramatic but on a lazy Tuesday morning, opening lines are very hard to think of. They don’t turn the genre on it’s head nor do they add a ground-breaking spin to the easily-tiring, synth-heavy lameness that has become pop-rock. Melodically and stylistically, this five-piece from North Carolina don’t differ much from the usual bunch but what sets these guys apart is how they can blend their sugary catchiness with arrangements far more spohisticated than the totally crappy pop-rock outfits that are essentially generic pop acts who barely even use their drums; it’s a crying shame that these are what we have populating the rock scene. The electro tinge they give their driving rock is a fast-paced combination that appeals heavily to the ears, but with insanely catchy hooks, you’d have to either be deaf or have a terrible taste in music to NOT like Believe It. The harmonization and layering of both the vocals and instruments. And speaking of instruments, one worth of a big, fat mention is guitarist, $B-Real$. The irony of his oh-so-fake name aside, the slick guitarwork scattered among the various tracks on Believe It are incredibly amazing and adds to the electrifying rock of Mercy Mercedes. And it’s not just infectious tunes these boys can come up with, the ballad-esque, piano-backed You Never Know is just as awesome, probably one of the best tracks with it’s elegant beat and sweet melody....full text |
| Reviewrinserepea |
| Of all the casualties of the 2008-09 recession, possibly the most tragic of them was the folding of esteemed indie label The Militia Group. The label had something of an almost holy status among its followers, for it introduced to the world the likes of Cartel, The Rocket Summer, and Copeland. In its final days, it looked like the label was perfectly poised to make headways into the lucrative tween scene queen market, with such sugary pop upstarts as The Summer Set and Mercy Mercedes. However, for all the negative stereotypes that this neon-tinged, image-driven market invokes, on their EP, 1.21 Gigawatts, Mercy Mercedes established themselves as a band that, though young, had the ability to produce not only soaring, stadium-worthy choruses (“The Perfect Scene”), but also show a level of artistic restraint (“Get It Darlin’”) that many older bands have not yet perfected. On Believe It, Mercy Mercedes once again proves themselves to be more than just pretty boys by unleashing one of the best pop-rock albums this side of the neon spectrum. Believe It opens up with the riffing of “Drop Top,” an immediately infectious, sugar-laden track that represents everything good about Mercy Mercedes, from the (relatively) soft-spoken verses to the explosive chorus. However, it seems that the band sometimes relies too heavily on these elements, as the songs on this record follow a formulaic verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-verse with a guitar solo from lead guitarist $B-Real$ thrown in somewhere in between. However, in a scene of bands that not only follows the same formula but uses the same riffs as well, such a complaint becomes only viable for the punk purists who don’t want to admit that they actually LIKE Mercy Mercedes despite the band’s sugary aura. No respectable fan of pop-rock can hear “The Perfect Scene” and think that there’s “anywhere that [they’d] rather be.” A re-recording from the 1.21 Gigawatts EP, this new version features better production and more layered harmonization. Such is the case with the entire record; each new song is a present waiting to be unwrapped, and, unlike that Christmas several years ago when your grandma forgot to give you that new action figure, you won’t be disappointed. "You Never Know" soars through the heavens as its light twinkling piano line highlights lead singer Nate Smith's soft-spoken voice, "All We've Ever Known" plows through the verses with beautiful underlying guitar work, and the revamped "Shiver Me Timbers" features crisper production that strengthens both its bridge and its chorus. However, the band truly proves their worth in album closer "Ways To Go," a carefully controlled ballad that highlights the band's level of self-control. Instead of exploding into an arena-rocking closer that would've immediately solidified the song's status as one of the album's best, the band takes Robert Frost's proverbial road less taken and keep it as constrained as it was in the beginning. The result is something of a caged beast, is a beauty to behold, and solidifies not only the song's status as one the album's best, but shows to the world Mercy Mercedes have some of the strongest musical chops in the industry today....full text |
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