Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev's ninth album Born Horses spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before? The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of Mt Tremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendary tapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys), plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass) and Jim Burgess (trumpet).
A place that feeds off the levitating mood of their last album, 2019's expansive tribute Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, and the instrumental psych explorations under the names of Harmony Rockets and Mercury Rev's Clear Light Ensemble, and the spiritual guidance of avant-garde artist Tony Conrad and Beat poet Robert Creeley, to whom Born Horses is dedicated. The record began with skeletal chords and a surge of self-reflection, from where we are vulnerable alive to the notions and motions of time and reality.
Released: September 2024
Cat: BELLA1582
Label: BELLA UNION
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Tracklist
2. Ancient Love
3. Your Hammer, My Heart
4. Patterns
5. A Bird Of No Address
6. Born Horses
7. Everything I Thought
8. There's Always Been A Bird In Me