DESCRIPTION:
Artist: Mercury Rev
Album: Yerself Is Steam
Release Date: 1991
Label: Columbia

Mercury Rev, originating from upstate New York and featuring John Donahue on guitar and Dave Fridmann on bass, achieved a synthesis of historical proportions. Yerself Is Steam (1991) was a psychedelic extravaganza that spanned three decades and three continents. Emotionally, it ran the gamut from Red Krayola's anarchic freak-outs to contemplative/meditative ecstasies in the vein of new-age music. Technically, it blended and alternated pop melody, ambient droning, mind-boggling distortion, oneiric folk, martial tempos, pastoral passages, infernal noise and lyrical lullabies. Far from being merely a nostalgic tribute to an age, Mercury Rev's operation started with the hippie vision of nirvana on the other side of a swirling and chaotic music, but tempered the optimism of that program with an awareness of the human condition, and poisoned it with fits of neurosis and decadent atmospheres.