Mercury Rev: Deserter's Songs – review

(V2)You don't need to know a thing about Mercury Rev to appreciate what a wracked place the band was in when it recorded its 1998 masterpiece, Deserter's Songs. Almost every note communicates emotional fragility and nostalgia for lost love, lost youth, lost dreams. Its songs are mournfully orchestral, shivering with woodwind and romantic but unstable strings. Its musical interludes, crackling as though transmitted by gramophone, are unsettling: a desolate piano murmurs to itself in I Collect Coi...

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