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EDIT INFOMercury Rev - Deserter's Songs
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Album Details
- Artist: Mercury Rev
- Album: Deserter's Songs
- Label: V2
- Year of Release: 1998
- ME Rating:
- Reviewed by: dscanland on 2003-03-31
RecommendFor Mercury Rev's first album on V2 they have come up with a different sound. Not as noisy as they have been in the past but still creative. The comfort shown on the album must be due to the relaxing sense of recording in your own studio. No pressure. The noise has been replaced with lush, orchestral sounds with liting melodies and unique textures. This may as well be considered a rebirth of the band and I like it. Includes guest appearances from the Band's Levon Helm and Garth Hudson. Suited for repeated listening. My vote for album of the Year 1998.
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on 2011-11-30 CharlesMartel Said:
You know I play this album so infrequently that I had actually forgotten I own it. And owning it reminds me of one of those occasional lapses of judgement I slip into, usually when someone tells me that such and such an album is great and I take their word for it rather than check it out myself. It is something I occasionally do and almost always regret it within a few days.
"Deserter's Songs" is an album full of apparently ambitious songs executed with rather sloppy handiwork and sung in one of the worst voices I have heard in a long time. And yet it is frequently held up as a masterpiece of its class. Now, I do not wish to denigrate masterpieces or those who hold them in such high regard, but there are masterpieces and masterpieces. And this is definitely one of the latter.
Let me explain. When Michelangelo sculpted his statue of David which now stands in the Accademia in Florence (actually, if you look, it cannot be David, but that is another story) he created a masterpiece. When Alfred Stevens created the Wellington Momument in St Pauls, he too created a masterpiece, in the Michelangelo style. But which of the two is the true masterpiece? When Mozart wrote "Jupiter" , it was a masterpiece: when Sussmayer completed the " Requiem " it was a masterpiece. But which was the true masterpiece?
The truth is that the term masterpiece is overused. "Deserter's Songs" might be Mercury Rev's best work, but it is far from a masterpiece. It is significantly flawed work. Poor vocals, pedestrian and at times soporific music, bland arrangements all weave together to create a work of unsurpassed mediocrity. Listening to it I hear echoes of " Soft Bulletin" but " Deserter's Songs" even lacks the lo-fi charm of that album. It is quite clear that either the abilities of the band are not on the same plane as their vision, or the band (and more especially the producer) did not put the effort into it in the studio needed to turn the ambition into reality.
The album is just about passable up to and as far as " Opus" . After that, it slumps rapidly into a morass of nothingness. At times it can be even silly. Imagine you had bought theatre tickets to go and see "The Tempest" at the Globe, but what you got was Muppet Show at a provincial backwater. Well, if you were expecting to hear a masterpiece in " Deserter's Songs" this may well be how you ended up feeling.
Rating: 3/10
