Nieuw album Mercury Rev op komst: Born Horses
Op 6 september zal Mercury Rev hun nieuwe album Born Horses uitbrengen, de derde plaat van de psychedelische rockband die uitkomt bij Bella Union. Inmiddels is ook de song A Bird of No Address vrijgegeven, na eerdere singles Patterns en Ancient Love.
Mercury Revs Grasshopper zei het volgende over de nieuwe single: ‘As Rebecca Solnit (poet laureate of hope) writes, “The grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect.” For all the birds of no address: Fly on!’
Born Horses is het negende album van Mercury Rev en de opvolger van Bobbie Gentry’s the Delta Sweete Revisited, het goed ontvangen eerbetoon aan Bobbie Gentry. De plaat komt wederom tot ons vanuit upstate New York, de strook tussen de Catskill Mountains en Hudson Valley. Het is volgens de eerste berichten ‘a cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer’.
Grasshopper: ‘When Jonathan (Donahue) and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future … Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.’
Mercury Rev liet zich bovendien inspireren door art minimalist Tony Conrad, uit de kringen van LaMonte Young, alsmede de invloedrijke beat-dichter Robert Creeley. Het doet alleen maar meer uitzien naar Born Horses.
Wat betreft de zang op het album deelt Jonathan Donahue alvast het volgende: ‘When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.’
Mercury Rev komt dit najaar voor een tweetal shows naar de Lage Landen:
- 11 November: Amsterdam, Paradiso
- 12 November: Leuven, Het Depot
