Possibly the finest hour of 1990s psychedelia.
(I'm pretty sure Meltmaster just read this and shouted "Bullshit! Insert Album Title Here was the finest hour of 1990s psychedelia!" And thus, a contest for who-can-upload-the-trippier-album-from-our-undergrad-years begins).
Crazed upstate-New York updates of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, featuring densely packed flute and guitar feedback freakouts, quaalude interludes and incessant half-fractured sarcasm and lysergic spazz.
I remember playing this in 1994 or so for a friend who only listened to Floyd and the Dead, and who dismissed all modern music as uninteresting. We were smoking thick joints of home-grown weed, and he got The Fear something fierce. Around the end of 'Very Sleepy Rivers' he suddenly got up and ran to the door and disappeared.
Be forewarned that Mercury Rev never really sounded like this again. The followup, Boces, is also manic and cruel, but with something indefineable missing (perhaps that subtle joy of doing something for the first time). After that they became gentler, more detached, more prog. Much less psychedelic despite the intricacy. That's not to say later albums weren't good, Deserter's Songs is a particular favorite for its melancholy and melodies. But this album is pretty unique.
Fans of Dave Fridmann's production style (Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney's The Woods, recent Low, etc.) will be interested in how it all began: in 1991, under the influence of professor Tony Conrad, recording to filmstrip in a campus studio, on a massive group acid trip.)
Interesting details abound online, most of them seemingly untrustworthy (did they really meet in a mental hospital? did Jonathan Donahue really try to gouge out Grasshopper's eye with a spoon on an airplane?). Super Hacker X and I saw them play a wierd demo set at a tiny new performance space downtown last year, and the band was nutty and spaced enough that some of these rumors sound credible. (Let's just say I've seen some acid casualties in my time, and these guys struck me as some of the more, um, fried specimens.)
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