Born Horses

Language available : english

Since their '90s masterpieces like Boces and Deserter's Songs, chamber-pop pathfinders Mercury Rev continue to enrich their unique and grandiose vision. Their last project, 2019's Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited—an all-star re-imagining of the left-of-Music-Row singer-songwriter's 1968 landmark album—was nothing short of spectacular. After a five-year silence they return with an ambitious and meticulously-orchestrated whoosh of pop grandiosity on a scale that few artists can even conceive.

Co-founder Grasshopper captures some of the drama in his description of the band—"From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert."  The first track, "Mood Swings," does just that, opening with echoed cries before evolving into a dramatic mariachi-influenced evocation of a sweeping landscape.  The dreamy and dramatic full-orchestra mood continues in "Ancient Love," where flowing keyboards, synth strings, cymbal crescendos, and a variety of horns give a sense of music floating through immense space and time.

The biggest change to the band's sound on the self-produced Born Horses is the whispered vocals by the other co-founder Jonathan Donahue, which he says developed naturally. "When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others." Furthering the feeling of hurtling through boundless space are the songs "Bird of No Address" and "There Has Always Been A Bird in Me." The latter, set to a pulsing beat from pianist Jesse Chandler and new member Marion Genser on keyboards, takes the flying metaphor deep inside: "It's always been there, carefully hid/ There's always been a bird in me/ Who doesn't have a tree, who doesn't sleep/ Who only sings when it hurts/ And it always seems to hurt … in me." Equally awed and vulnerable, Born Horses is Mercury Rev still eager to explore. © Robert Baird/Qobuz