REVIEW: Mercury Rev, Deserter's Songs (V2)
- Niles Baranowski
At once panoramic and claustrophobic, Mercury Rev's fourth album is a slap in the face to anyone who dismissed them after lead singer David Baker left the band. Equal parts symphony, psychedelia and pop, the band has managed to anchor its disorienting soundscapes in the conventional and rather than compromising them, it has made them even dreamier and more seductive.
Most astonishingly, the band has even managed to turn out three fantastic future hit singles (astonishing for a band once considered the pinnacle of inaccesibility); "Opus 40", which is the ballad to end all ballads; a sexy Roxy Music-esque number (complete with slick saxophone solos) about riding the rails called "Hudson Line" and best of all, the jaunty "Cat's in the Cradle"-esque "Goddess on a Hiway," all of which are probably better than anything you heard while driving to work.
Any of these songs would be great enough done by anyone, but Mercury Rev brings a gentle, rather than a bludgeoning, touch to them that's particularly welcome. Vocalist Jonathan Donahue's falsetto is the opposite of, say, Richard Ashcroft's preachiness or Noel Gallagher's begging; rather, it's the sound of a young boy afraid to talk macho to the girl he's wooing because he's doing all this for the first time.
Similarly, Suzanne Thorpe's flute and Jimy Chambers's harpsichord are slight and shy, hiding in the shadows only to emerge briefly as on "Endlessly," which has a few bars of "Silent Night" thrown in to make it even more bleak and pure-sounding. Even though Deserter's Songs as a whole shares this bleak, virginal feeling, it's hardly an unwelcome one. Even so, the few upbeat tracks present here are needed to keep focus. "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp" could pass for a more old-fashioned (dig that harpsichord!) Charlatans playing a hoedown at the world's end. And veteran guitarist Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak's lead vocals on "Hudson Line" are all about motion, with each line being clipped as if jetting off into the horizon. "Gonna leave the city/ gonna hop a train tonight" he promises, restless and full of hope.
A few of the grouchier longtime Mercury Rev fans may feel slightly cheated about most of the 12 tracks on Deserter's Songs, grumbling about "sell-outs" and the like. But there's only so long that you can stay true to an abstract ideal, like noise, before the loneliness begins to eat at you (as it seemed to on 1995's See You On the Other Side) and the desire to connect with someone else (like your listeners) takes over, be it through hooks or humor (there's a lot of unself-conscious mockery here, like in the Dali-esque "Moles"). For the first time, Mercury Rev sound like they give a damn and it makes Deserter's Songs one of the warmest, most artful and alluring records you'll hear this year.
