• Submit data corrections for Score! 20 Years of Merge Records - Various Artists on AllMusic Score! 20 Years of Merge Records - Various Artists| Data Corrections| AllMusic AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript.
• If Merge manages another 20 years as prodigious as their first, their legacy will deserve to be as revered as their records. You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook for content updates. Also, sign up for our email list for weekly updates and check us out on Google+ as well.

Last year marked the 20th anniversary of Merge Records, and in addition to a 5-day music festival, we celebrated with SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records, a limited-edition subscription box set that was delivered to subscribers throughout 2009.

We now have a very limited number of complete SCORE! box sets available for purchase in the Merge store. All proceeds will benefit charities chosen by the 14 curators.
SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records includes:

• Fourteen CDs with original cover art and bonus content from curators such as Kara Walker, David Byrne, Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, and more. Bonus content includes exclusive new recordings from The Minus 5, Lou Barlow, Destroyer, and others. Andrea Zittel, Zach Galifianakis, David Chang, Miranda July, and Phil Morrison provide exclusive videos for their compilations.

20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers!, a Various Artists Album. Released 7 April 2009 on Merge (catalog no. Genres: Pop Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock.

• The Covers! CD featuring Merge songs covered by non-Merge artists including Ryan Adams, The Mountain Goats, The Shins, The New Pornographers, and more

• The Remixes! CD featuring Merge songs remixed by non-Merge artists including Four Tet, Jason Forrest, Mark Robinson, and more

• The Merge Records Companion, a full-color, 350+ page softbound book featuring every single Merge record cover from the past 20 years

• A Scharpling & Wurster full-length CD featuring new and exclusive comedy from The Best Show on WFMU’s Tom Scharpling and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster

• A special-edition Andrew Kuo poster

• And last, but not least, a specially designed box to display all of it in!

Only 200 SCORE! box sets remain, so order yours now in the Merge store. All proceeds benefit worthy charities chosen by the 14 SCORE! curators. Don’t miss this chance, because when they are gone, they are gone forever!

• Various Artists

Beggars Records

Merge continues its 20th anniversary festivities with a comp of non-label artists-- Bright Eyes, Shins, New Pornos-- covering songs from its catalog.

Merge Records doesn't look its age. Originally formed as an outlet for Superchunk material, the Durham, N.C.-based label has grown into an indie institution, but only gradually-- year by year, release by release. It never allied itself with a scene or a sound, so the mind doesn't automatically tether it to a specific place or time, the way Sub Pop, despite its strong roster this decade, will be most closely associated with Seattle in the late 1980s and early 90s. So it's hard to believe Merge is already 20 years old, an occasion the label is marking with a big birthday bash-- the five-day XX Merge fest in July-- and a subscription-only series of commemorative retrospectives and remixes. Perhaps the most intriguing party favor is Score! Twenty Years of Merge Records: The Covers, a choppy but oddly endearing compilation that enlists 20 non-Merge acts to cover Merge songs.

Mute Records

Score! doesn't resemble a traditional label sampler as much as one of those carefully curated compilations like this year's Dark Was the Night. Both releases benefit charities, both feature the National at their most subdued, and both serve as a useful state-of-indie report. But where Dark emphasized 'primarily folkie tunefulness, baroque lines in which the guitar is subservient to other instruments' (as Scott Plagenhoef wrote in his review), Score! allows and even encourages these artists to indulge every idiosyncrasy, no matter how potentially off-putting or digressive. The result is a weirder, less polite album, one that showcases a diversity of musical styles and seems much more representative of 2000s indie.

Rounder Records

More representative, however, doesn't mean better. This comp's inclusive cross-section comes with a downside: If there's something for everyone, there's also something for everyone to skip over. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' workmanlike cover of Robert Pollard's 'The Numbered Head' will likely get played often (at least those opening chords), as listeners move past the Hive Dwellers' discursive take on Superchunk's 'My Noise', which pares the song down to scattered drum hits, a meandering melodica, stair-stepping bass, and floating vocals. It's interesting to hear the Merge founders stretched out like taffy, but it's interesting only once. Conor Oberst's earnestness gets the better of him on Bright Eyes' version of the Magnetic Fields' 'Papa Was a Rodeo', which takes the song at face value and misses its meta-country-song ironies. Stephin Merritt demands a more complex approach with shades of feeling rather than primary colors, and unfortunately Jens Lekman and Tracey Thorn also learn that the hard way on 'Yeah! Oh, Yeah!' communicating only sincere resignation to the neglect of lust, mischief, and desperation.

Who'd have thought Merritt would prove so difficult to cover? And who'd have thought Chris Lopez would be so easy? He gets two testimonials here, one from the much-misses Rockateens and another from Tenement Halls. The New Pornographers streamline the Teens' 'Don't Destroy This Night' and reinforce that central snaky riff, while the Shins put floaties on the Halls' 'Plenty Is Never Enough', making its shuffle all the more buoyant. Similarly, East River Pipe gets a pair of songs: Okkervil River chop and screw 'All You Little Suckers' to little effect, but the Mountain Goats make the otherwise humdrum 'Drug Life' into a rotting-flesh acoustic lament, emphasizing the melody's similarities to Frankie Valli's 'Let's Hang On' as a darkly ironic gesture. Of course Superchunk get the most covers-- four in total, all with varying degrees of success. After the Hive Dwellers, Death Cab for Cutie find new kicks in 'Kicked In' thanks to a murkier, more emphatic sound that suits them well, and Ryan Adams preserves the drama of 'Like a Fool', although it sounds like he could be covering Echo & the Bunnymen here. Best is Les Savy Fav's no-frills re-creation of 'Precision Auto', which they rev into a frantic driving song.

Fortunately, there's little reverence here for two songs that might be considered sacred cows. The Apples in Stereo turn Neutral Milk Hotel's 'King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 3' into a power-puff pop song, complete with yo-gabba melodies and adorable synths that inject a little light whimsy into Mangum's dark lyrics. And Times New Viking remake the Arcade Fire's 'Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)' as a lo-fi dirge that's equal parts pisstake and affectionate reimagining. It's an ideal closer for a comp that, rather than simply showcasing the signees' songcraft, effectively settles Merge and its roster into the larger context of 20 years of indie rock, emphasizing the give-and-take between the label and the rest of the world. Just think what Merge will do when it reaches drinking age.