Merchandise frontman Carson Cox has described the band’s forthcoming record A Corpse Wired for Sound as an admission that with maturity comes loneliness. With this information, one might expect Merchandise’s new single, “Lonesome Sound,” to be stark, a dark reflection on emotional isolation. Well, it is and it isn’t. The track’s reality is that of melancholy, of desperation: “To be free/I went hunting/Deep in the ground/Where beauty dies/Her secrets lie/But are never found/Just let me drown,” Cox rumbles.

Drown he does in the lonesome sound, but Cox sounds wizened—like a prophet telling his long-past tale around a fire. This acceptance, this lack of anger, is reflected in the song itself, which is both scorched and ecstatic. The guitars, though brooding, have a feeling of lightness; there’s even a brief moment of shredding. In “Lonesome Sound,” Merchandise deal with desolation through resilience.