Mercury Rev

Mercury Rev, one of the most important bands of the 1990s, was born in Buffalo, New York during the 1980s. The group did not have a fixed drummer, and instead revolved around John Donahue (guitar, and later vocals), Sean “Grasshopper” Mackiowiak (guitar, clarinet), and Dave Fridmann (bass). David Baker performed primary vocals on the earlier and more prolific recordings, and Jimy Chambers functioned as their early drummer and keyboardist. For the recording of the single Carwash Hair (Mint Films, 1991), as well as other contributions to several albums, Suzanna Thorpe was added on flute.

Yerself Is Steam (Beggars Banquet, 1991 - Columbia, 1992), their debut, is one of the most important records of psychedelic rock and one of the masterpieces of the '90s. On first listen, the record’s sound is chaotic and swirling, obviously signifying Mercury Rev’s cathartic function, and their aim to achieve an acid-influenced nirvana, just like the first San Franciscan hippies. But every song hides terrible neurosis, which amplifies the most electric moments of Neil Young, and gives rise to a sick and decadent atmosphere, different than that of the optimistic and carefree '60s. The schizophrenic compositions of Mercury Rev are delicate ballads that hide the soul of a serial killer. The complex music appears to be a new age version of Red Krayola; uncoordinated and unbalanced, like Red Krayola, but at the same time containing a contemplative and meditative sound, like new age music. The band’s method of hypnosis is well exemplified by the song Frittering, in which one of the guitars "sings" the spongy melody while the other is immersed in a sea of distortion. Everything goes on for eight minutes over a hypnotic cadence. Chasing a Bee runs for seven minutes and is the quintessence of '"dreampop" music: folk guitar chords are underpinned by an underworld of eccentric sounds, all accompanied by a fairytale-like lullaby singer. Slowly, the guitar riffs become more distorted and loud, while the pace becomes more and more martial. Meanwhile, the noise generated by Thorpe’s pastoral flute playing hovers calmly over the piece. The song is gradually submerged in a maelstrom of hellish noise. Blue and Black is a piece of Dadaist theater in the most solemn tradition of David Thomas: a soft-toned shamanic blather, it is as insane as it is poetic, floating on a gentle rhythmic carpet on which stands massive chords for both piano and orchestra. Percussion is often the protagonist; the harmonies are always accompanied by eccentric rhythms. Syringe Mouth is influenced by the demented saraband of Red Krayola, with a carousel of guitars and distorted vocals set to a crazy martial rhythm. In Sweet Odyssee of a Cancer Cell, exhaled over a charging beat are almost Indian psalms, and before long the song is screwed into a dizzying Sufis dance. The disc culminates with Very Sleepy Rivers, twelve minutes of slow clouds of chords and ethereal singing, which is broken by an inhumane fear. The theatrical aspect of the album can be attributed to David Thomas’s influence on the band, but the spatial sense is derivative of Pink Floyd.

The following album-less single, If You Want Me to Stay (Rough Trade, 1992), seems to mitigate the madness of the ensemble portrayed on the previous record. The next record, Boces (Columbia, 1993), however, ran with the brilliant anarchy of the previous album, but this time with excessive self-indulgence. Meth of a Rockette's Kick unwinds for ten minutes on a carpet of pretty, anxious, and harmonic adventures. It is a succession of surreal solfeggio, dissonances, arpeggios and rings, with an ethereal flute solo from Thorpe and sudden bursts of distorted guitar. On the surface the track is a fairy’s floating lullaby; a carousel for children that takes the form of a pastoral, Mediterranean arrangement a ’la Kevin Ayers, and rears a melody that owes something to the Flaming Lips. The meat of the song is gradually shown, though, and in the end it is revealed to be a long jam of jazz horns, children's choirs, and exotic percussion (a composition that leads one to make connections to Kevin Ayers’ Colores Para Dolores). Developed in their own pseudo-orchestral fashion, Mercury Rev created two more entertaining songs: Trickle Down and Hi-Speed ​​Boats. Both are set at a strong pace and placed in a sonic cloud of distortion, and both are held back by litanies reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr.. As proven on this and the previous record (and through a look at the turbulent personal history of the band), the group is enhanced when deformed; when guitars, percussion, and wind instruments are free to ramble and create cacophony, the band is at its prime. The long raga Snorry Mouth, however, has a thread to more serene music, which holds together the centrifugal forces of chaos, and ends up limping behind the melody. Unlike classic psychedelia (Pink Floyd), which was anchored to the form of the song, Mercury Rev creates music with a free flow of sound and without a predefined order, such as the changing and unpredictable course of a stream. In this sense, their compositions are more closely related than one would originally think to the free-form works of Robert Wyatt and even the most baroque jazz-rock. This is clearly shown by the liquid jamming of the songs Boys Peel Out and the enthralling improvisation Something for Joey. The incoherent, messy opera that is Boces closes with the blues ballad Girlfren, which lies somewhere between the "acidfolk" of the Holy Modal Rounders and the most brilliantly inebriated of Tom Waits. Mercury Rev’s true specialties, though, were their cacophonous delusions that prove them as masters of musical transformation.

Following Boces, Baker left the band (to form the Shady) and Donahue became the unique lead singer. Adam Snyder was added on electric keyboards (mellotron, synthesizer, electric piano), which added a third layer of ivory to the two played by Chambers (clavinet, harpsichord) and Fridmann (piano and mellotron).

See You On the Other Side (Columbia, 1995), their next record, tries to sound a bit more ‘pop.’ A mostly serene and joyful, yet compact and focused, air limits the disc to swirling and spatial rides. Empire State, a fairy tale nursery rhyme to the beat of a march, degenerates into percussive chaos scarred by a free-jazz saxophone. A mutant hard-rock riff (a little bit of exuberance from the realm of the stratospheric Gong) can be found in Young Man's Stride. Although the record starts off strong, after the second song it is all downhill. The record becomes a prisoner of more and more brazenly ‘pop’ songs, even if it is redeemed continuously with touches of genius: the romantic solo clarinet in the maudlin country dirge Sudden Ray Of Hope; Racing the Tide features counterpoint pastoral flute and French Horn, which has a slightly pathetic affect; Close Encounters Of The 3rd Grade is suddenly launched into a frantic disco "groove,” while a soprano sings with the choir, which is an off-key chorus of synthesizers. Everlasting Arm parodies the ornate orchestra of Tin Pan Alley (Somewhere over the Rainbow in particular). A Kiss from an Old Flame utilizes a deadly tango, and Peaceful Night is a Salvation Army blues piece, filled with gospel organs and a sad bombardment of horns. At this point in the bands career, the general sonic background of their music has become more tenuous, although more and more refined, more and more calculated, and especially more and more orchestral. Donahue’s vocal register is perhaps too tempting, and the melodies are too sweetened, giving the impression that this is their Dark Side of the Moon; when the ingenious psychedelic music leads to the loss of the psychedelic touch, what remains is only a baroque pop mediocrity.

The single Everlasting Arm contains Deadman, a collage of 34 minutes.

Paralyzed Mind of the Archangel Void (Big Cat, 1995) was recorded under the pseudonym “Harmony Rockets” and only contains a suite, forty minutes in length. The EP I've Got a Golden Ticket (No 6, 1998) contains bizarre covers of Vangelis songs and of film themes.

Deserter's Songs (V2, 1998), which in the process of its creation added violin, contrabass, horn, and trombone, is rather schizophrenic: on the one hand, the record’s atmosphere is just as hallucinatory as the previous records, but on the other, the production is usually reserved to a light music orchestra. The music, then, is the equivalent to a treatise on post-modernism: the sound is not that of a score, but instead a repetition of continuous musical quotes of others, in particular those of suburban Broadway and vaudeville. Sadly, where the previous album seemed to be a vain affectation of their original sound, the orchestration, at this point, was seemingly becoming the norm. Holes is the first song on the album, and the sounds that begin it are those of a classical string section and a pastoral flute. The song is decadent, scanning, and martial, like the Flaming Lips, but marries that aesthetic with a clear envy of the languid symphonic orchestrations of later Pink Floyd. Tonite It Shows takes a theme and arrangements from nostalgic ‘50s soundtracks (oboe, violin, harp, xylophone) as only Van Dyke Parks could do. Their method on this album is a deconstruction and reconstruction of clichés and masterpieces. To the yearning in the string section (and this time in the women's choir as well), Endlessly adds the yelps of an atmospheric Theremin. The short song Hudson Line is a hodgepodge of unrelated ideas, from the poignant saxophone solo (played by Garth Hudson of the Band) to the searing electric guitar, to the warbling of an alto chorus, to the minimalism of the string section, to the passing phrases for organ, trombone, xylophone, etc., this relatively short work is obviously jumbled. This album proves that the commercial orchestration was becoming a method of creating music for Mercury Rev. As in the case of Pink Floyd, the band began with brilliant psychedelia, which deteriorated in later albums into far-fetched instrumental scores with a polished sound until, ultimately, the extraterrestrial compositions of the beginning gave way to a pop-fashioned, melodic sound. There are glimmers of hope for genius, though, like the jazz-rock exuberance of Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp; however, the song is more "marketable" than any of their prior brilliant moments. The postmodernist practice leads them to more and more literal interpretations of past music. The violins of Opus 40 are strongly reminiscent of Penny Lane (The Beatles), and the vocal harmonies as well as the gospel organ solo come from the Band (the melody resembles that of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and perhaps the organ solo is in homage the drummer and guest of honor, Levon Helm). It is curious that, in the end, the disk triumphs. Among the lows, there are high moments, like the ballad Goddess on a Hiway, which is strangely reminiscent of Neil Young despite containing a baroque harpsichord. It was as if under the immediate Baroque trappings of the record there was the rediscovery of the American tradition. The arrangements within the record are a riot of electronic keyboards, which are entrusted with the melody, rhythm, and polyphony. The timbres are colorful, and the dynamic is swirling. This record, in conclusion, is a little Pet Sounds (Beach Boys) by Donahue, who put order into chaos and tried to save what little rationality there was left in the early records.

Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak, in the meantime, released his first solo album, The Orbit of Eternal Grace (Beggars Banquet, 1998), which holds Silver Balloons, perhaps the catchiest of his career.

The good news about All Is Dream (V2, 2001) is that it is the most self-referential work of their career: instead of turning the tradition upside down, Mercury Rev turn their own past music upside down. Unfortunately, the good news comes with some seriously bad news. Gone is the anarchic, chaotic, savage sound of the beginnings. What we witness today is three mildly detached musicians disfiguring their own legacy by using kitsch and easy-listening arrangements that hark back to Jack Nitzsche's or Phil Spector's 1960s pop records. For the first time a Mercury Rev album features a couple of embarrassing songs, as if the band couldn't come up with two more to finish the album and thus dusted off whatever they could find in the drawer.
Take away the layers of instruments and half of the album is made up of soft country-ish Neil Young-ian litanies. Notable examples include Tides Of The Moon, despite the soul-jazz embellishment and the psychedelic guitar solo, Dark Is Rising, despite the orchestral swells, Little Rhymes, despite the noir atmosphere, and the closing Hercules, despite the synth drone and the folkish strumming.
The more lively songs sound like pale imitations of Syd Barrett's eccentric folk-rock: Nite And Fog, the languid piano ballad Spiders And Flies, and especially the lunatic A Drop In Time, halfway between orchestral muzak and vaudeville.
One song, Lincoln's Eyes, relies on an uneasy balance between old and new styles. The whining falsetto is hardly endearing, and the folkish melody is hardly original, and the instrumental tumult is too linear to be truly dramatic, but the coda is quite ghostly.
Sure, the album showcases the band's talent and skills at manipulating sonic icons. This is not all too different from what happened to the Grateful Dead in their later years: living-room psychedelic music for aging hippies based on great playing and some cool ideas.
The problem is that the band is now doing for real, in earnest, what they originally merely pretended to do: heavily-arranged pop music.
However, even the worst Mercury Rev album is still one of the best albums of the year, but it remains their worst and does not bode well for the future. This album presented the vision of Mercury Rev in their old age playing pop-soul ballads or Bowie-esque glam-rock.

The Secret Migration (V2, 2005) is sheer calligraphy. The band continues to "normalize" the music, smoothing out the corners, erasing the discontinuities, reorganizing the chaos. No more no less than what Pink Floyd did with Dark Side Of The Moon and subsequent albums. Just like with Pink Floyd, the result is classy easy-listening music for the generation that missed the real action (Black Forest, Diamonds, Climbing Rose).

The double-CD The Essential Stillness Breathes (2006) is a selection of their most popular songs and a CD of rarities.

Hello Blackbird (2006) contains the music for a film soundtrack.

With bassist Dave Fridmann having become one of the most creative producers of the 2000s, Mercury Rev sounded more artificial than ever on Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc, 2008). The album had nothing that even remotely matched the glorious mess of their early albums. The mainstream press that had missed them in the 1990s hailed it as a masterpiece, a fact that signified more about the influence that their sound had on the music world than the real merits of this late, lame and lackluster work. Only a virtually total ignorance of the contemporary music scene could explain why anyone would find anything relevant in these modest, old-fashioned songs.

Strange Attractor (2008) was an instrumental album distributed for free to anyone who bought Snowflake Midnight.

Other than the archival double-album The Peel Sessions (2009), and compilations, the band was silent until a new lineup with Jonathan Donahue, Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak, new bassist Carlos Anthony Molina and new drummer Jason Miranda recorded The Light in You (2015), an album of nostalgic orchestral pop arranged with synthetic strings and horns.

They then decided to cover the entire album The Delta Sweete by country music’s singer-songwriter Bobbie Gentry using an impressive cast of female vocalists: Norah Jones, Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, Marissa Nadler, Vashti Bunyan, Phoebe Bridgers, Beth Orton, Lucinda Williams, etc. However, Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited (2019) is a very minor tribute album.