We are thrilled to announce two full-length reissues from Chapel Hill’s endlessly influential and dearly missed Polvo! Their 1992 debut Cor-Crane Secret is pressed on blue & white Peak Vinyl, and its 1993 follow-up Today’s Active Lifestyles is pressed on red & mustard yellow Peak Vinyl. Both limited-edition reissues feature updated-but-familiar artwork; the former showcases rare posters and ephemera from the band’s archive while the latter includes never-before-seen photos.

Pre-order in the Merge store ahead of the February 28 release date, with the option to bundle the two LPs with Polvo’s newly expanded self-titled early singles compilation on translucent teal Peak Vinyl, previously only available as a bonus item with our 30th anniversary Born Under a Good Sign subscription series. ***UPDATE :: The bundle option is now SOLD OUT! Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered this limited offer.***

Opening with “Vibracobra,” Cor-Crane Secret, with songs such as the herky-jerky “Kalgon” and the youthful-yet-complex “In the Hand, In the Sieve,” established the first iteration of that Polvo sound: intricate guitar melodies, Mr. Ash Bowie’s plain-spoken vocals politely deep beneath the guitar waves, and cool ideas of how guitars could go together all over the place. In an era where guitar bands seemed to be blooming like wildflowers in a particularly fertile cow pasture, Cor-Crane Secret was a complicated bloom indeed. But Polvo was just getting started.

Produced and recorded over four heady days in December 1992 by former Bostonian and ex-Volcano Suns bassist Bob Weston (around the time he started in Shellac), Today’s Active Lifestyles hit record store shelves in April 1993. From the whizzing crunch of “Thermal Treasure” to the loping, connective “My Kimono”to the 7-minute-plus blowouts “Stinger (Five Wigs)” and closer “Gemini Cusp,” the album asserted its place as a most worthy successor to Cor-Crane Secret. The foreboding title of a particularly screechy, fuzzy jam, “Time Isn’t on My Side,” proved to be nonsense; Today’s Active Lifestyles has aged beautifully.

Indie rock? Not the 2020 kind. Math rock? Eh, not really. This was the sound of a new Southern rock, of a pre-internet guitar storm that looked at what came before and said, “What’s next?”