Mercury Rev is an American rock band formed in 1989 in Buffalo, New York,[5] with singer/guitarist Jonathan Donahue and guitarist/clarinetist/sound generator operator Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak as the only constant members. The band's music has incorporated indie rock, psychedelic rock and American roots, amongst other forms. Mercury Rev have been closely associated with The Flaming Lips,[6] and the two bands have shared historical ties.
Mercury Rev was formed in 1989 by students at the University at Buffalo, partially inspired by the drone music of composer/media studies professor Tony Conrad (then working as a teacher at the university, and a strong artistic influence on co-founder Grasshopper).[7] The line-up gradually coalesced around Donahue, Grasshopper, vocalist/keyboard player David Baker and flute/French horn player Suzanne Thorpe; subsequent additions were bass guitarist/in-house producer Dave Fridmann (a music production student at SUNY Fredonia, who began by recording the band and subsequently added enough bass guitar and sonic effect parts to make himself a full band member), and a late addition in the form of drummer Jimy Chambers (who joined towards the end of initial recording sessions to "effectively serve as the frame around Mercury Rev’s musical splatter.")[8]
The band was initially formed to score its members' student films,[9] and had a loose playing and recording existence. The band's initial music was a blend of experimental, psychedelic rock, drone and noise rock. David Baker recalls "we were in Buffalo, sitting there thinking, there's no hope of us being a band, we’re not going to be Guns N’ Roses. What we did wasn't considered real, because it wasn't being covered by Spin or Rolling Stone, so we could just be whatever we wanted to be. We'd take the microphone and record pots and pans or guitar and make our own little world. I mean, we knew the context, we knew who Bowie was, we knew who all the bands were, but we didn't put them with us. We were just making music. It was, 'Us? Are we in a band?' Well, none of us live in the same town, we just meet in the studio and have a great time together doing stuff."[10]
At this early stage, several members also had other musical interests which prevented consistent Mercury Rev activity. Donahue worked as a gig promoter for other bands' concerts in Buffalo, which brought him into contact with The Flaming Lips in 1989: he then toured with them as guitar technician before formally joining as lead guitarist in time to play on their 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance. The latter album was co-produced by Dave Fridmann, who went on to co-produce every Flaming Lips studio album to date with the exception of 1993's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart.[6][11]
The David Baker years: Yerself is Steam and Boces (1991-1993)
Mercury Rev's debut album was 1991's Yerself is Steam. Once referred to as "soundtracks to actual movies, composed by a band that didn’t really exist," it originated as the collective's attempts to devise and perform musical scores for student films showing in local galleries, or for existing nature documentaries which they'd watch on television and jam to.[8] It was followed by the "Car Wash Hair" single, a more straightforward song typifying the band's early merging of psychedelic rock and noise rock. During this year, the band had begun to solidify and concentrate on more sustained effort. Yerself is Steam had been completed during Donahue's breaks from Flaming Lips activity in tour and in Oklahoma: following creative disagreements with the band's frontman Wayne Coyne, Donahue left The Flaming Lips in mid-1991, shortly after recording the Hit to Death in the Future Head album. This enabled him to return to Buffalo and concentrate full-time on Mercury Rev. Fridmann, meanwhile, had produced the band's early recordings as part of his university course-work, meaning that Mercury Rev could access and use the SUNY Fredonia studios in off-hours and at cheap rates.[8]
As they began to play live (and across a greater spread of venues and events), the band began to make a name for themselves as creators of powerfully experimental, often chaotic psychedelic music, with Pitchfork later recalling "in their formative years, Mercury Rev really did sound like a careening bus headed towards a fiery crash — one where half the people on board were frantically fighting each other for control of the wheel, and the other half were in the back obliviously singing nursery rhymes as the whole bucket of bolts went up in flames... [It was] less a melding of disparate sounds than a battle royale of oppositional ideologies: order and anarchy, ecstasy and terror, purity and perversion."[8]
Although Dave Fridmann remained the band's bass player, co-producer and co-composer in the studio, he often had to step back from his role as live bass player due to increasing demands on his time as a record producer.[12] Bassist John DeVries substituted for Fridmann at an increasing number of live shows, including an Ireland-and-England tour in the autumn of 1992, with Gerald Menke taking over live bass duties by 1993.[13][14]
Despite considerable critical acclaim,[15][16][17] Mercury Rev's early releases gave them little more than cult popularity,[6] although thanks to early British press interest they secured a prestigious slot at the Reading Festival for their third-ever gig,[8] and later appeared on the smaller second stage at some 1993 Lollapalooza stops.
The band's second record, Boces was recorded during 1992 and 1993, with the band's collective creative approach in full flow. David Baker later recalled "[Jimy Chambers] was really into a lot of '60s music; Dave Fridmann, his background was more jazz. He used to put Steely Dan on a lot of the time. Suzanne was of the mind set of trying to conquer all these guitars with her flute. I thought people should be able to put their thing into the mix because it is better to have everything in... The drummer was writing a song, the bass player was writing a song and it would get blown up by someone else. Jonathan was a major song writer and I did a lot but everybody got to contribute... There were pre-ideas and songs brought in but I don't think anybody would have been allowed to tell people what to do. They knew their song was going to get blown up. Maybe you don’t bring in a song that you weren’t ready for somebody to blow up."[18]
Later in 1993, the band embarked on a tour to support the release of Boces, including some Lollapalooza shows during the summer. At the Lollopalooza gig at Greenwood Village, Colorado on 26 June, the band were forced off the stage for being too loud and "out of control" following an objection by the Mayor of Denver.[8][19]
David Baker parted company with Mercury Rev after the Boces tour, citing musical and personal disputes.[10]
Baker remained on good terms with the band,[10] and would later record albums as Shady and Variety Lights. With his departure, the thematically darker and musically experimental features of Mercury Rev began to disappear, with the music gradually shifting over time towards a melodic, ornate sound.[4]
Transitional period: See You on the Other Side (1995-1997)
The band's first post-Baker album, See You on the Other Side (1995) contained a variety of styles, including a sprawling psychedelic opening track and noise rock numbers like "Young Man's Stride" (for which a music video was released), but also more melodic songs, such as "Sudden Ray of Hope". By this time the live band included organist Adam Snyder and brothers Jason and Justin Russo of psychedelic rock band Hopewell (as bassist and keyboardist respectively).[14]
That year, the group also recorded and released the album, Paralyzed Mind Of The Archangel Void, under the moniker "Harmony Rockets". The album featured a single forty minute track of mostly instrumental psychedelic improvised music. It was rated four and half stars, out of five, by AllMusic. (Fourteen years later, in 2009, the group would revisit it for performance in the Don't Look Back concert series.)
See You on the Other Side failed to sell well, a situation which helped to trigger a destructive period for the band during which they fell into debt, came into conflict with their record label, lost their manager and lawyers, and parted company with drummer Jimy Chambers.[20][21] Donahue and Grasshopper, in particular, were failing to communicate with each other and struggling with their individual drug and relationship problems.[20][21]
While Grasshopper retreated to a Jesuit guest house in upstate New York, Donahue began to listen to records of children's music and to write simple melodies on piano (in contrast to the band's former psychedelic/electric compositional approach.[22] At the same time, he was invited to guest on a Chemical Brothers track called "The Private Psychedelic Reel".[23] This in turn inspired him to repair his musical and personal friendship with Grasshopper.[21][23]
Breakthrough albums: Deserter's Songs and All is Dream (1998-2001)
Mercury Rev relocated to Donahue's birthplace of Kingston, New York,[9] and began recording in the Catskill Mountains. The personnel for the album was a loose core of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Suzanne Thorpe, joined by Dave Fridmann and by former drummer Jimy Chambers, and augmented by local musicians (including two former members of The Band - Garth Hudson and Levon Helm). The involvement of the latter began to shift the band's musical focus closer to roots and acoustic music. At the secondary recording and mixing stage, Donahue, Grasshopper and Fridmann opted not to use their previous method of distorted guitar and electronic overdubs and instead began to use strings, horns and woodwinds, resulting in more of a chamber pop sound while retaining a psychedelic tinge.[20][24]
The 1998 release of the resulting Deserter's Songs album met with acclaim, and made Mercury Rev unexpected pop stars.[25][26][27][28][29] In the UK, NME magazine made Deserter's Songs their Album of the Year.[30] Donahue's earnest, high-pitched vocals and concentration on relatively concise, melodic songs gave the band's material an entirely new feel and much increased popularity (Deserter's Songs spawned three UK Top 40 singles: "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp", "Opus 40" and "Goddess On A Hiway").
Both Suzanne Thorpe and Jimy Chambers left Mercury Rev following the recording of the album, with the tours promoting Deserter's Songs featuring the return of the Russo brothers and Adam Snyder (although all three would depart the live band during 2000). Jeff Mercel, who'd played on Deserter's Songs, also joined as touring drummer, and would soon become a full band member.[14] Although Thorpe would return as a guest player for All is Dream,[14] she would subsequently concentrate on academic research and emerge as a Deep Listening instructor, university lecturer and electro-acoustic improviser, as well as becoming part of "pirate-punk" band The Wounded Knees.[31] Thorpe has also returned for occasional band revisitations of the Harmony Rockets project, including one at the 2009 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England.[13][32][33] Chambers would later form the band Odiorne.[14]
By 2001, the band's nucleus was Grasshopper, Donahue and Mercel, with Fridmann remaining as co-producer and studio bass player. The All Is Dream album was issued in 2001 and became the band's highest charting album in the UK to date (#11). It included "Little Rhymes", "Nite and Fog" and "The Dark is Rising," which reached No.16 in the UK Singles Chart.[34] David Bowie producer Tony Visconti arranged strings and provided Mellotron parts for the album, which also featured contributions from Jason and Justin Russo. However, the Russo brothers did not join the band on tour this time, their places being taken by bass player Paul Dillon and by multi-instrumentalist Carlos Anthony Molina on keyboards, augmented by second keyboard player Michael Schirmer.[14]
The Secret Migration, Snowflake Midnight and others (2004-2014)
Film Music Live Improvisation for the short movie The Red Balloon
Carlos Anthony Molina had become a full Mercury Rev member by the time of Mercury Rev's fifth album, The Secret Migration, which was released on January 24, 2005, and on which he played both keyboards and bass guitar. The album featured the UK Top 40 single "In A Funny Way" (#28). The album itself reached #16 in the UK Albums chart. Jeff Mercel moved to keyboards for the subsequent tours, with his place on drums being taken on live dates by Jason Miranda.[14]
The Secret Migration was followed up in 2006, by a compilation album, The Essential Mercury Rev: Stillness Breathes 1991-2006 and the film soundtrack album Hello Blackbird. The band released a pair of albums on September 29, 2008: Snowflake Midnight, and a free MP3 album of instrumentals, Strange Attractor, following which Jeff Mercel left the band (although he would rejoin them on tour in 2011 to promote the release of the double disc reissue of Deserter's Songs). Former Midlake keyboardist Jesse Chandler was recruited to Mercury Rev in 2014.[35]
Recent activity: The Light in You, Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited, Born Horses (2015-present)
Mercury Rev's first studio album in seven years, The Light in You was released on October 2, 2015, through Bella Union. It reached #39 on the UK albums chart. [36] This was the first Mercury Rev album not to be co-produced by Dave Fridmann. At this point the band were officially a duo of Donahue and Grasshopper, with Molina, Miranda and Chandler still regularly contributing but as part of a set of support musicians.
Although Molina and Miranda's involvement with the band had ceased by 2016, Chandler had become a full member of Mercury Rev by the time that the band released Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited in February 2019. This was a reworking of Bobbie Gentry’s 1968 album The Delta Sweete,[37] featuring instrumentation by Mercury Rev and a different female guest singer on each song. Lucinda Williams, actress Carice van Houten, Beth Orton and Norah Jones were among the vocalists. The album achieved a Top 40 position in the UK charts, peaking at #32.
2021 saw further changes to the Mercury Rev line-up, with new bass player Chris Heitzman and second keyboard player Marion Genser joining the band.
On June 4, 2024, Mercury Rev announced their latest studio album, Born Horses, which was released on September 6, 2024. The first single from the album, “Patterns,” was also released on the day of the announcement.[38][39] The band's line-up changed again this year, with Joe Magistro taking over on drums, and guitarist/flugelhorn player J.B. Meijers (who'd already made some band contributions in 2018) joining full-time.
↑ "Goddess on a Hiway" did not enter the Flanders Ultratop 50, but peaked at number 18 on the Ultratip chart.[42]
↑ "Senses on Fire" did not enter the UK Singles Chart, but peaked at number 68 on the UK Physical Singles Chart.[51]
↑ "Rainy Day Record" did not enter the UK Singles Chart, but peaked at number 60 on the UK Physical Singles Chart.[52]
↑ "Okolona River Bottom Band" did not enter the Flanders Ultratop 50, but entered the Ultratop "Extra Tips".[42]
↑ "Okolona River Bottom Band" did not enter the Wallonia Ultratop 50, but entered the Ultratop "Extra Tips".[43]
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