Better Than Nevermind : No. 6 - Mercury Rev - Yerself Is Steam

Mercury Rev - Yer Self Is Steam (Beggars Banquet)

From Buffalo, New York of all places, comes one of the best psychedelic rock bands of all times and one of the best psychedelic records ever made. Here, I’m cheating a bit because although I had listened to it at the college radio station, it wasn’t until the following year that I had my hands on the CD (the Columbia reissue). As many people -- well, not that many actually -- who experienced early Barrett-era Pink Floyd and thought everything after Meddle was lame hippie easy listening, Yer Self Is Steam starts slow but soon the steam locomotive derails in a full freakout, right during track 1 Chasing A Bee. Acoustic guitar and flute (Suzanna Thorpe) are contrasted with bursts of electric screeches and colorful deep bass lines over mumbling and singing, until only the flute and soft dissonant chords remain, setting the tone for the whole album. You are definitely sucked into someone’s weird dream. When Syringe Mouth starts, one expects to hear Neil Young jamming with the Floyd within the chaotic and vertiginous virtuosi, as we are slowly being hypnotized thanks to a low rumble and excellent staccato riffs while the madness of dual voice (crazy/spoken) prevails; Flaming Lips have definitely found new rivals. The shortest song of the album, Coney Island Cyclone, offers the (bitter)sweet(est) acoustic guitar and jangles, aiming for a dreampop angle while keeping both feet in Dino Jr. territory. The locomotive gathers even more steam of the bong type on Blue and Black, with the main vocalist intoning a baritone (almost like Pete Steele) with quiet strumming before the song erupting in a frenzy of piano and keyboards as ethereal as can be, although the whistling and the David Thomas-esque high pitched mumbles are as unsettling as a shaved Britney Spears; dreampop becomes nightmare pop and the steamship goes back down to Earth (or another planet, not sure). The centerpiece of the album, Sweet Oddysee Of A Cancer Cell T' Th' Center Of Yer Heart, starts with bursts of distortion and ethereal jangles, but after a few jagged turns of interlaced bass and drums, the locomotive becomes a juggernaut that suddenly stops to gather even more steam and launching itself in a disorienting rollercoaster swirling in THC laden clouds among crackling feedback mandalas. What…a… trip. Who needs drugs, when you have music like this, man? But the ride is not done yet! Frittering starts with acoustic strumming over a bit of electric guitar doodling until the deep bass kicks in along a church organ. The drum pushes the song forward and the distortion now envelopes the singer’s nasal declamations as the whole sonic mass slowly devolves into a jam and your ears are numb. There is a weird interruption, Continuous Trucks And Thunder Under A Mother's Smile, which sounds like an excerpt from one of Red Krayola’s freakouts, and the train goes on the rails again, first with a bit of flute and an ominous bass riff while the wind blows. The soundscape enters psychedelia again with subdued guitar strumming and barely audible mumbling, sparse drumming, and Sleepy Rivers slowly builds up with demented vocals as the overall sounds slowly becomes louder and louder. The flute becomes dissonant, the percussion intensifies without release, and every few minutes the guitar steers into short bursts of solos and the voices become ghostly and otherworldly. The music only erupts at the very end with the voices and the flute blending into a howl, the screeching of the guitars covered by the drums until only a Chinese erhu remains. The Mercury Rev locomotive has ended its journey. We are no longer dreaming, but at the doorstep of another musical world.