Mercury Rev
Born Horses
★★★★
BELLA UNION
It’s been nearly 26 years since Jonathan Donahue sang “holes / dug by little moles,” on Deserter’s Songs, the record that reanimated Mercury Rev’s ailing career with the force of a lightning bolt. It remains a strikingly tender line on a song that strives to capture the implacable march of passing time, the way in which life can be slowly destabilised, its certainties gradually scratched away by invisible forces that might as well be – why not? – tiny burrowing mammals.
The animals on Born Horses, Mercury Rev’s first album of original material since 2015’s excellent The Light In You, are of a quite different order, however; horses that are about to take flight, birds that live inside you, extended family of the odd apocalyptic creatures beloved of later-period Nick Cave or Bill Callahan. There has always been a visionary, veil-tearing quality to Mercury Rev’s music - it explains why The Chemical Brothers were keen to collaborate with them on The Private Psychedelic Reel – but Born Horses sees their clairvoyant thrum dialled up to full power. With new members Jesse Chandler on piano and Marion Genser on keyboard, Donahue and his core collaborator Grasshopper have turned all their existential wonderings into a record that aims for grand, son-et-lumiere spectacle, boldly theatrical without being insincere, without losing its otherworldly haze.
Its sense of musical theatre is partly down to the opulent, red-velvet instrumentation – cascading pianos, orchestra-pit strings and brass – but it’s also inherent in Donahue’s frequent spoken-word delivery, turning into a psychedelic Rex Harrison on the trembling emotional fantasia of Your Hammer, My Heart. On the declamatory Patterns, you sense his face turned up to the gods, glistening in the spotlight. In their dimension, it’s a Tony-winning performance.
Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly...
At other times, these songs stay closer to beatnik-jazz: Mood Swings, delivered under a lowering Sketches Of Spain sunset, unfolds like an early Tindersticks narrative (“my mood swings like a pendulum clock / the little pills won’t make it stop”), while the title track, looped and lassoed by strings and choral vocals, is a magisterial meditation on freedom and potential that is part-Broadway, part Esalen Institute end-of-year show.
It’s two “bird” songs that hit hardest, however: the Vangelis-pulse of There’s Always Been A Bird In Me, a statement of fierce, flight-or-fight defiance, and A Bird Of No Address, where Donahue suddenly sinks into a whisper as he sings “Hail Mary full of grace… I’ve lost someone that I can’t replace” before calling – the most moving moment on the record - “Drinks for all my imaginary friends.” His mood swings, indeed - much like this record swings between mystic wildness and crafted drama. Bands, as Donahue famously sang on Holes, “never work quite right”, but with this late-period beauty, Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly.
Born Horses is out now on Bella Union.
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Tracklisting
Mood Swings
Ancient Love
Your Hammer, My Heart
Patterns
A Bird Of No Address
Born Horses
Everything I Thought
There's Always Been A Bird In Me
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