Where the Lips were clearly a product of classic rock, psychedelic, and punk traditions, Mercury Rev were built atop a philosophical foundation more than a musical one. At SUNY, Donahue studied under Robert Creeley, the celebrated post-modernist poet whose minimalist, evocative work often embraced the non-linear logic of jazz. Mackowiak studied under avant-garde filmmaker Paul Sharits and composer Tony Conrad, whose early-’60s drone explorations would lay the groundwork for the Velvet Underground, and whose classroom teachings instilled Mercury Rev with new perspectives on creating art. “One of the first assignments he had the class do was to pick a film or piece of music that we personally strongly disliked, and write about it in a very positive way,” Mackowiak would reminisce to NPR following Conrad’s 2016 passing. “Then the next week, we were to do the opposite, pick something we liked and totally trash it. That was an amazing exercise in opening the mind up to questioning: ‘What is high-brow? What is low-brow? What is good art and what is bad art?’… the distinctions between folk art/folk music and the ‘classics’ were erased.” Baker, meanwhile, didn’t even think in musical terms at all. “It’s more emotion that influences us than music,” he would tell the L.A. Times in 1993. “An influence could be a car backfiring, chocolate, sex, or deprivation of sex.”
In eight songs, Yerself Is Steam uncorks a flood of sounds and sensations, resulting in an awe-inspiring, nerve-racking experience, floating in the liminal space between childhood innocence and adult anxieties. That volatility is reflected in the dynamic between the group’s two vocalists: In Baker, you had a singer who sounded like a malfunctioning tape recorder, randomly pitch-shifting between voice-cracking glee and gothic gloom, sometimes in the span of a single line; in Donahue, you had a stoner crooner who could chase the dark clouds away with his starry-eyed serenades, while tapping deep veins of sorrow. When their voices appear together, they’re not so much playing off each other as fronting two completely different bands in their minds, making a song like “Syringe Mouth” sound like a kindergarten circle-time sing-along being held in the middle of a Butthole Surfers concert.
Given the group’s piecemeal origins, the members of Mercury Rev were always quick to downplay any grand design on their part. Speaking about the band’s creative process to the L.A. Times, Baker said, “We’re not trying to make radio-friendly hits and if there are those song structures there, well, it’s not intentional.” No song advertised that anti-pop manifesto as proudly as “Very Sleepy Rivers,” where Baker freestyles madcap Dr. Seuss-like couplets (“I sensed a new scent, so innocent and bent/I sense a new scent that’s innocent and spent”) in his creepiest register, while the band’s seasick groove oozes and churns for over 12 unsettling minutes. But even at its most confrontational, Yerself Is Steam is ultimately a testament to Mercury Rev’s innate melodic fortitude.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM