Have Mercy

Too often bands are concerned with creating the perfect album rather than the right one. HAVE MERCY have tried the former in the past, but on MAKE THE BEST OF IT, out on Hopeless Records, they succeeded in the latter.

During the writing and recording of Make The Best Of It—a seven-month affair with producers Paul Leavitt (All Time Low) and Brian McTernan (Thrice)—Swindle made sure to internalize the essence of Have Mercy and let that guide the songwriting. In fact, this self-reflection led to something unprecedented for the singer: scrapping an entire album’s worth of songs and rewriting the whole thing from scratch in the studio.

In the end, this patience was rewarded. Make The Best Of It is all at once raw and composed, lyrically heavy but brimming with indelible melodies. It balances soaring ballads like “Baby Grand” and “Ghost” and riff-heavy, full-throated “Smoke and Lace” and “Begging For Bones” with ease, placing Have Mercy somewhere between the emo scene they came up in and wider rock landscape that’s teeming with opportunities.