Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs

10.0 – USA – 1998

- Masterpiece - 

Stunningly gorgeous comeback album from the Rev. Originally, this record was to be made as a eulogy for the band: dispirited from the lack of success of its predecessor, See You On The Other Side, Jonathan Donahue and “Grasshopper” Mackowiak decamped to upstate New York for one final go around. The recording sessions also ostensibly served as a means of escape from the City and its temptations (as memorialized on the Grasshopper-written “Hudson Line”). Hence, one presumes, the title.  

“Deserter’s Songs” was also a label attached, perjoratively, to Dylan’s Basement Tapes as the folkies and protest kids thought he was abandoning his duties as the Voice of a Generation. The connection between this Deserter’s Songs and the late sixties work of Dylan and his Band, however, goes beyond a shared recording location (made explicit by the presence of Levon Helm and Garth Hudson who provide a stellar drum part to “Opus 40” and a sax line to “Hudson Line”, respectively).

Influenced in part by a collection of old, pre-rock children’s songs owned by Donahue, the Rev’s Deserter’s Songs seems to exist in the same, to borrow a phrase from Greil Marcus, “Old Weird America” as Dylan’s Basement Tapes. However, while the Basement Tapes’ timelessness is ultimately rooted in the westward-looking late-nineteenth century, the Rev’s version of the “Old Weird America” is one that is just a little older and, perhaps, a bit further to the north and east. Indeed, the record evokes the musical equivalent of, say, a Washington Irving novel, or, perhaps, an H.P. Lovecraft back story. That last comparison is not suggest any sinister atmosphere at work here, but there is an overwhelming sense of age, like a centuries-old childhood dimly remembered through faded broadsheets and musty children’s books with creepy full plate engraving illustrations of anthropomorphized animals in Victorian evening dress. (That said, it is an amusing thought to imagine the “Goddess On [The] Hiway” as some Eldritch Star Spawn.) In some strange way, this record has the same hazy childhood sound as the work of Boards Of Canada, only this is not the distorted memories of 70s born Scots, but rather the hazy infancy of America itself. A slightly more urbane counterpart perhaps to the similarly timeslipped work of Will Oldham.

Anyway, enough of this metanarrative malarkey. Musically, the record borders on perfect. Sure, Jonathan Donahue’s voice can sometimes get a bit cloying, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here (although “Tonite It Shows” threatens to verge on being just a little too precious). While on earlier records, Mercury Rev dressed up their songs in layers of distorted guitars, here they rely on a much more old-timey pastoral sound of woodwinds, horns, and strings (albethey of the mellotronic variety, well, actually the mellotron’s predecessor, the chamberlin).  The bowed saw that crops up in a couple of places – notably the tremendous opener “Holes” – is a particular highlight. That track, along with the warm organ-led “Opus 40” and the stunning “Goddess On A Hiway” are the clear standouts, but the album just works so wonderfully as a whole. Even the presumably throwaway instrumentals are miniature sound sculptures of exquisite beauty. Yea and verily, this is the true Cosmic American Music. They would never reach such heights again. How could they?