Idolator
Welcome to another edition of "Please Release Me," in which your Idolators request—nay beg—that an out-of-print, delayed or held-up-in-customs album be issued stateside:
Artist: Mercury Rev
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Album: See You On The Other Side
What is it?: The third album from this ever-evolving psych-space-pop outfit is tricked-out and trippy—strings, horns, flutes and everything else are jammed together, often on the same song—but never inaccessible: "Sudden Ray Of Hope" streamlines cooing soft-rock sanguinity with guitar squonk, while the seven-and-a-half minute "Empire State" veers into every genre imaginable, save for grime, which hadn't been invented yet. They should have called this See You On The Other Side Of The Dark Side Of The Moon
Where Is It?: Released in 1995, it's been out of print for a while in the States (though you can find affordable used copies on Half.com). A recent U.K.-only best-of collection gives us hope that there may be more MR reissues on the way, and we'd love for an expanded, updated Other Side. Our noise-canceling Bose headphones are rarin' to give it a go!
Mercury Rev - Empire State (Son House In Excelsis) [MP3, link expired]
Mercury Rev - Sudden Ray Of Hope [MP3, link expired]
Mercury Rev [Official Site]
Comments
Wonderful album indeed -- it's a good friend of mine's favorite of all of their work, and I can't do justice to her words for it so I'll quote her from a public bulletin board elsewhere (and hope that she doesn't mind, as she'll see this post I'm sure!):
I adore this album's gentle loopiness! It's very romantic album too, had you noticed that also? I mean, not in a "champagne and roses" cliche romantic kind of way, but a Krazy Kat, Little Nemo, Jiggs and Maggie kind of romanticism, filled with abstract expressionistic scenery, scruffy urchins, smiling paper moons, deco orchestration, dancing chorus girls, and well-aimed bricks ...
"... Loved ones came in sight
Storming down the street like Puerto-Rican kids in a summer rain
Breaking open the hydrants and going insane ..."
or
"A kiss from an old flame A trip to the moon ... Who knows what black and crazy names swim around inside her brain/adrift across the silver screen ... Our strolling make-believe ballroom glides ... into the starlit nite two fools rush in you and I ..."
Why haven't more bands mined this rich fusion of 30s/70s/90s? It's got such great potential (as show on this album). Mercury Rev were always hoplessly obsessed with the 70s, but for this one album, they finally got smart and decided to take inspiration not from their 70s idols, but from the things that _inspired_ their 70s idols : namely, the sounds and sights of the 20s-30s. So instead of going to, say, Roxy Music for inspiration, they went where Roxy went : to vaudeville and cabaret and Fred Astaire and Film Noir ...
There's a hint of this time-travelling on the album cover : anyone who's old enough to have lived through the 1970s will probably recognize it as a film still from a famous 7-up tv commercial. This is the "O" in the word "UN-COLA". And within the o, as if within a little porthole window, dances a 30s-style Busby Berkley chorus girl. It's the perfect image to show the telescoping nature of this album : a view of the 30s ... through the 70s ... in the 90s.
One last thing : Avalanches fans, check out "Close Encounters of the Third Grade". That's where their cluttered, dubby, giddy sound began, as far as I can tell, and a full 10 years before "Since I Left You"! ... The main feature of "Close ..." (besides the amusing "No, see YOU on the other side!" comments) is the interplay between a 70s style soul diva and a 30s style soprano. I jokingly refer to that as "Rowetta meets Operetta".
They go well together.
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