Mercury Rev
photo: Steve Gullick
32 articles
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Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Guardian, August 2001
ON MAY 28, 1998, Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" of Mercury Rev sat rather dejectedly in a diner in Woodstock, New York, and talked about ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, May 1998
On the eve of the album's release and success, Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak talk about it's creation, and look back at their struggles since the band's formation.
File format: mp3; file size: 57mb, interview length: 59' 20" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 6 August 2001
Jonathan Donahue and Jeff Mercel talk about band members past and present, and working with producers and arrangers such as Jack Nitzsche and Tony Visconti, plus their very own Dave Fridmann
File format: mp3; in 2 parts, total file sizes: 50mb, total interview length: 51' 19" sound quality: ***
List of articles in the library
Review by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 16 February 1991
AT LAST, one of those rare records that revolve along once in a blooming moon and have something new to struggle to say. You have ...
Mercury Rev: Mean Fiddler, London
Live Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 15 June 1991
IT SEEMS LIKE A SMALL ETERNITY since indie America last puked up a truly ear-boggling band. The innovators of the late Eighties have become a ...
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 24 August 1991
MERCURY REV's debut album has been hailed as one of the albums of the year. SIMON REYNOLDS talks to the band in New York about ...
Mercury Rev: Nice Merc If You Can Get It
Interview by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 4 January 1992
THE FRIDAY afternoon rendezvous with Mercury Rev isn't quite going as planned. Police have cordoned off a large stretch of Harrow Road, West London because ...
Mercury Rev and Medicine: Fuzzy Daydreams Replace the Grimness of Grunge
Report by Simon Reynolds, The New York Times, 22 November 1992
AFTER THE EXPLOSIVE success of Nirvana last year, and the ensuing breakthrough by Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, alternative rock is now ...
Live Review by Eric Weisbard, L.A. Weekly, 8 July 1993
PASSING THROUGH San Francisco (the fourth stop on the tour) last Tuesday, Lollapalooza '93 showed signs of going to seed: the electronic billboard above the ...
Mercury Rev/ The High Llamas: LA2, London
Live Review by Andy Gill, MOJO, September 1995
THE DECOMMISSIONED DISCO dungeon that is LA2 is hardly the best place to see a group like The High Llamas. ...
Profile and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, unpublished, 1998
MERCURY REV, one of the great if most overlooked American groups of the 1990s, are finally releasing a new album, their first for V2 Records. ...
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 25 September 1998
NAMED AFTER Greil Marcus's evocative description of The Band's early albums, this latest offering from Mercury Rev is, by some distance, the best pop record ...
Review by Tom Cox, Uncut, October 1998
Divine stratospheric trip from sentimental gadgeteers ...
Mercury Rev: Calm after the storm
Interview by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 2 October 1998
Tom Cox meets a bunch of animal-loving weirdos who have made a mind-boggling new album ...
Review by Andy Gill, MOJO, November 1998
HERETOFORE, MERCURY Rev have trodden that fine line between order and chaos with a, shall we say, idiosyncratic sense of equilibrium. Part of the appeal ...
Review and Interview by Mike Barnes, Select, November 1998
THE FOURTH ALBUM from the US six-piece who now make their home in America's Catskill Mountains. In last month's Select Ed Chemical Brother described Deserter's ...
Interview by Ben Thompson, MOJO, January 1999
HOW MANY BANDS ARE THERE who have made their best records after losing their lead singer? Whoever said "Marillion", go and sit in the corner, ...
Mercury Rev: Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, The Guardian, 14 January 1999
IF YOU'VE chanced upon the term 'post-rock' and wondered what it meant, refer to Mercury Rev, who — at a guess — are the very ...
Mercury Rev: Corn Exchange, Cambridge
Live Review by Chris Roberts, Uncut, March 1999
THAT MERCURY Rev have not only survived a turbulent decade but emerged from it as the alterno-rock world's darlings and champions is heroic, funny and ...
Mercury Rev/Sparklehorse: Irving Plaza, New York City
Live Review by Eric Weisbard, Spin, September 1999
HERE'S A TRACK worth savoring: Veteran modern-rock band collaborates with Chemical Brothers and incorporates into their music bowed saw, arching melodies, and a gaggle of ...
Book Excerpt by Ben Thompson, 'Ways of Hearing', 2001
NOT SINCE Joy Division turned into New Order has a band coped as well as Mercury Rev with losing its lead singer. But given that ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 11 August 2001
TWO AND A half years ago, American mavericks Mercury Rev thought their career was pretty much over. For the band's two Catskills-based mainstays – singer/guitarist ...
Mercury Rev: All Is Dream (V2)
Review by Ian Penman, Uncut, September 2001
THIS IS AN AFTER record in all senses: after loving the highs and lows and then learning to disavow that love, after going through the ...
Mercury Rev: Dream Of A Lifetime
Retrospective and Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, September 2001
"WE WERE NEVER interested in placing ourselves, in saying that we were a band that started in the late Eighties and were the musical emissaries ...
A Long Strange Migration: Jonathan Donahue Talks
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, January 2005
RBP: What difference did it make working in your own studio for the first time? ...
Mercury Rev: The Secret Migration (V2)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
Follow-up to 2001's All Is Dream, recorded in the band's own Kingston studio by the core Rev trio of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Jeff Mercel. ...
Mercury Rev: Still breathing creative life into essential albums
Interview by Mike Diver, Drowned in Sound, 30 September 2006
TWO-THIRDS of Mercury Rev sit in a room, alone expect for their current interviewer, one of many who'll sit before them this afternoon, a pad ...
Mercury Rev: Hello Blackbird (V2)
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 3 November 2006
FOR MUCH of their career – certainly since they began exerting a modicum of discipline over their experimental leanings – Mercury Rev have seemed to ...
Mercury Rev: "Let's try to corral this wild horse, fellas"
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Guardian, 19 September 2008
After years of chaos and in-fighting, Mercury Rev are back on track. They tell Mike Barnes how they reinvented their music — and themselves ...
Mercury Rev: Snowflake Midnight
Review by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 26 September 2008
TEN YEARS after Deserter's Songs became a gorgeous Americana classic, Mercury Rev have made another masterpiece. ...
Report and Interview by James Medd, The Word, June 2011
Mercury Rev's masterpiece was inspired by an orchestral record of Rip Van Winkle from childhood. Deserter's Songs has just reawaken. ...
Mercury Rev: Oval Space, London
Live Review by Jude Rogers, The Guardian, 28 November 2015
A COUPLE ARE slow-dancing next to the ladies' loos, moony smiles on their faces. Three similarly-minded women float out of the bathroom, swaying their hands ...
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