Old Mercury Rev or new?

I liked all is dream but didnt care much for what came after.

I really like All Is Dream, hate Secret Migration, and Snowflake Midnight grew on me.

dunno about this live recording, strings sound really out of tune

ooh too bad. haven't listened yet, but the description sounded good.

Mercury Rev's first two albums are two of the greatest psychedelic rock albums I know. See You On The Other Side was OK. Deserter's Songs was OK. That's as far as I'll go. What they're doing now is bottom of the barrel stuff.

well, yes. but I think you're being generous to Deserter's Songs

Why? It's probably better than The Soft Bulletin and at least comparable to it. I'm wondering if people would rip it so much if it didn't come from Mercury Rev. The major downfall of post-David Baker Mercury Rev is Jonathan Donahue's falsetto voice. He didn't seem to sing like that on the first three records. It's grating.

no their downfall was being schmaltzy and boring

Really kicking myself for having lost all the early live MR I'd managed to collect when the hard drive they were on crashed. Wish somebody'd reseed them to Dime.

Always liked that David Baker era, possibly plus the lp afterward. The solo lp as Shady was pretty cool too.

can someone suggest the best OLD rev youtube stuff to watch - i never managed to see them in their prime

The solo lp as Shady was pretty cool too.

Huh! Never knew that existed. It's on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/7jWizxSOaZZ7uDGCd5Wn6H

Looking that up, also found David Baker has a new band. Also on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/artist/1QBoxeY3NcUIZ3lNw3Tl4l

Yeah, the Shady album is pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe1x-oApWt4

First MR I heard was Deserters Songs, which I love, but I dig the Baker-era to a degree. Too much of the time his approach strikes me as third-rate David Thomas, but the noise makes up for it.

All Is Dream is decent, but after that, whew, a serious plummet.

I think David Baker's influence on the band is overstated. Yes, their best albums were the first two. But all he did was contribute vocals.

I find the 'early Rev good, post-SYOTOS Rev the WORST SHITTY SHIT EVER' mentality kind of hysterically over the top

If anything I find AID a slight improvement over DS - it takes a few more risks. Early Rev is total genius, let alone 'good'!

I'm currently playing Yerself - Boces - SYOTOS and am very happy. "Frittering", jesus.

Still love DS, however.

"Yerself" doesn't do much for me production-wise-- I'm not a fan of Fridmann in general and that record is especially sonically squashed. Vocals and guitar annoy me, they pop out in this frustratingly intrusive way. I dunno, I've heard rehearsal space recordings from psych bands that sound pound-for-pound deeper and more interesting that this record. I don't think I've ever switched off a record in frustration more often.

I've listened to "Boces" a bunch and I like it!

i've been listening to yerself and boces a lot lately, and they sound as amazing as ever. syotos never did much for me, weirdly. i should probably try again. i liked deserter's songs okay enough at the time, but all is dream was so bad it actually kinda made me hate deserter's almost instantly when i went back to listen to it. ("wait...this is just as corny and pompous and twee...") "schmaltzy and boring" is otm. it's like shitty self-serious indie rock being smothered in 100,000 pounds of icky saccharine incidental movie music from the 40s. i wouldn't check out the newer ones on a bet.

their live shows around the deserters period were incredible

what do they even do now? didn't grasshopper and donahue do some harmony rockets shows semi-recently, i.e. maybe they've moved beyond the i-want-to-be-willie-nelson-in-space stuff?

say what you will about the flaming lips but they never did fully lose their love of noise (it's kinda hard to imagine mercury rev recording a collaboration with lightning bolt at this point), and i'd probably take dippy self-aggrandizement and obnoxious omg wtf lol antics as a way to stay in the spotlight over the rev's slow petering out into "worthy of a two-and-a-half-star review in rolling stone" release pattern/ongoing rep-tarnishing.

what do they even do now?

Bizarre. I pulled out Boces and played it for the first time in years pretty much at the exact time last night that this revive came up. Oh well - Boces is fantastic. YIS is one of the all time evers - Frittering - my god. I've not heard the 3rd much at all - I know I have it but I've not put much effort in.

There's a lot of strange stuff on Spotify - was there a lot of post - DS albums? Hmm.

Never heard of this before: http://open.spotify.com/album/3kDihlAmqg2HS9wSAVq0C4

They have a few obscure releases from the '90s. I know they have a 7" live split with Spiritualized.

their live shows around the deserters period were incredible
otm, the one i saw (late 98?) was outta site.

"Yerself" doesn't do much for me production-wise-- I'm not a fan of Fridmann in general and that record is especially sonically squashed. Vocals and guitar annoy me, they pop out in this frustratingly intrusive way. I dunno, I've heard rehearsal space recordings from psych bands that sound pound-for-pound deeper and more interesting that this record. I don't think I've ever switched off a record in frustration more often.

I've listened to "Boces" a bunch and I like it!

― friday goodness thank it's (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, January 20, 2013 1:14 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did hear that YIS was recorded with no 2 members in the studio at the same time, might be a bit of an exaggeration but I think it was mainly individual overdubs done at different times.
Don't think they'd played live until after that was recorded. something like their 6th gig was a Dylan support or so I heard.
Think they'd all been involved in an art project or something which meant they weren't really a band until after it was recorded. & they picked their name from a Chris Roberts review where the 2 words appeared out of a field of text Exploding Plastic Inevitable style or at least that 's the way I'm remembering reading it at the time they emerged.

their live shows around the deserters period were incredible
otm, the one i saw (late 98?) was outta site.

― tylerw, Saturday, January 19, 2013 9:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM seconded. Saw them in the summer of '98; "Tonite it Shows" live was a wonder to behold.

I saw them about that time and hated them with a hatred rarely matched before or since... hold on, hwne was "Soft Bulletin"?

... 1999, yes so it was around that time because the Flaming Lips were supporting them and absolutely annihilated them

@ Stevolende that is very interesting!

something like their 6th gig was a Dylan support or so I heard.

That's true. Here's a quote from David Baker from back in like 1993:

We did play one show with Bob Dylan. I don't think anybody at that show remembers us playing except for the fact that there were six people on the stage making them deaf. It was at Yale University. We played our regular stuff for 2000 people who didn't know we were going to be on. We figured it was the wrong thing to do to play with him because we're not like him. But we figured that it would make sense. The crowd was old and young. It was the young republicans sitting there getting mad, and screaming at me afterwords, yelling 'You fucking shattered my ears' or something. And then this old guy, maybe about 50 years, grabs me and I'm going 'Oh shit, maybe this is big mistake.” But he goes 'That was fucking awesome. I haven't heard anything like that since Hendrix.' So it was the older people, the ones who talked to us, who seemed to like it. The younger ones were saying 'That's not music.'

I just remembered what I think the art project was, think it was films, nature/wildlife films and possibly specifically subaquatic ones.
So the future members of at least the 1st Mercury Rev were a pool, or part of a pool of local musicians doing film soundtracks which is why they were coming in at different times and overdubbing. The films provided the original supposed coherence, if I have the picture right.

There was some relationship/collaboration with Tony Conrad too, right? Or am I remembering that wrong?

'That was fucking awesome. I haven't heard anything like that since Hendrix.' So it was the older people, the ones who talked to us, who seemed to like it. The younger ones were saying 'That's not music.'

This rules.

As much as I like it Deserters' is like half a record, counting up the incidental tracks

There is something very stilted and dead about all Mercury Rev to me, if you ever loved The Olivia Tremor Control you don't need any of this fucking rinse.

what

I like OTC fine but they are way more retro pastiche than Mercury Rev ever was

Which goes to show that retro pastiche>>>>>standard widely acceptable overproduced retro with cloying pity me schtick.

Uhhh, wut? Have you actually heard any early Mercury Rev?

Yeah, I kind of feel like we've suddenly begun talking about some other band called Mercury Rev. Maybe there were two.

"Pity me schtick" is not something I've ever associated with (any incarnation of) Mercury Rev.

Sorry folks I will stay off this thread. I just immensely dislike them and shouldn't even be on here. For what it is worth I bought Yersrelf Is Steam when I was a teenager and hoyed the fucking cassette in the bin after 2 days.

O_o

"Pity me schtick" is not something I've ever associated with (any incarnation of) Mercury Rev.

"it's not time for the real live sign, it's not time for these fears of mine" *wall of feedback*

"The Dark is Rising" is some old sad sack down by the river stuff tho. There's that Neil Young influence that's kind of mopey.

I can definitely hear the Neil influence, but I always interpreted the tone of that song as winking/wistful, rather than wallowing.

Single link argument for BOCES:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h2VvMgwIF4

"Something For Joey" live from the Phoenix Festival (1993)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDKrWsSBSg