When the world shut down in March 2020, it took HAVE MERCY’s victory lap with it. The beloved Baltimore-based emo/indie quartet had called it quits after a decade-long career and were wrapping their time together with sold-out, sweat-and-tear-soaked performances across the country – then, seemingly overnight, everything changed. There was no hometown show at the Ottobar, no final bow to thunderous applause and bittersweet emotions alike. It was like slamming the book shut before the final pages were even written.
A lot changed for frontman Brian Swindle after that. He got sober, got engaged and got creative, releasing a string of solo singles that built on the foundation he’d laid with Have Mercy while expanding it in new ways. Soon, though, he felt the pull of his past, texting his bandmates: “I wrote a song. It sounds like a Have Mercy song and not a Brian Swindle song.”
Before long, the band’s classic lineup – Swindle, guitarist Andrew Johnson, drummer Todd Wallace, and bassist Nick Woolford – were turning the singer’s acoustic demo into “I’ll Wait,” a big, bold reintroduction for the group and their first new music since 2019’s The Love Life (Hopeless Records).
Autobiographical and teeming with the same heart-on-sleeve honesty that endeared them to the underground in the 2010s, “I’ll Wait” is the kickoff to the band’s brand-new UNTITLED EP (released via ZODHIAC Records) and encapsulates the mission statement they’ve set for this new chapter of Have Mercy.
