Much has changed in the decade since Mercury Rev last released a studio album, not least their line-up. Born Horses takes the ‘space blues’ band in a new and even more dreamlike direction and pays tribute to both beat poet Robert Creeley and former Faust member Tony Conrad. Frontman Jonathan Donahue and guitarist/keyboardist Sean ‘Grasshopper’ Mackowiak discuss maximalism, nature programmes and the art of trying to remove seagull sounds from their songs.
Jonathan Donahue of Mercury Rev likes to keep the camera off when he’s doing video interviews, making it easy to imagine him pontificating in a darkened room. Following a quick check to ensure it is actually him, he replies, cryptically: “What’s left of him.”
How so? A rough night or an impromptu tiger mauling, perhaps? His response is beautifully Confucius-like: “The eye cannot see itself,” he drawls. “It can only see parts of itself. So, from what I can tell, I’m mostly here, but there are parts in the back of me I cannot see.”
This is the kind of metaphysical gold one hopes for from Donahue, the lead singer of the inscrutable, neo-psychedelic rock legends who emerged out of Buffalo, New York 35 years ago. His musical partner, Grasshopper, seems more worldly and less philosophical, in spite of the name. Is this why they don’t ordinarily do interviews together?
“Sometimes it’s just easier, because I have a couple of little boys who are seven and nine years old, so it’s harder to get together if I’m watching the kids,” says Grasshopper, beaming into his iPhone, his soul patch tightening when he smiles.
These conversations take place separately, one hour apart, with a strong pervading sense of night and day. Donahue speaks methodically and thoughtfully, sometimes a little grandiloquently, but enjoyably so; Grasshopper, on the other hand, seems like a guy you’d meet at a bar. Perhaps these contrasting personalities are the secret to Mercury Rev’s longevity?
Their current line-up is augmented by recent-ish recruits Jesse Chandler and Marion Genser, though, since co-founder David Baker left in 1993, the band has been predicated on Donahue’s long-standing friendship with Grasshopper. Which brings us to Born Horses, Mercury Rev’s first proper studio album of new material in nine years.
“Time plays a big role in not just the gestation of the songs, but in allowing them to go through the winds that myself and Grasshopper, in particular, go through, eroding everything around them until what’s left is the statue,” says Donahue, explaining the delay.
“It’s sort of a way of chiselling the marble off of the statue that’s already there. And so, as an artist or a songwriter – whichever one you want to accuse me of – I do rely very heavily on this. I’m jealous of bands that can turn around albums in 18 months; and maybe early on in our career that’s something we were able to do.”
Seagulls were squabbling over fish heads and things. We spent a lot of money and time trying to ‘de-seagull’ the voice tapes
Jonathan Donahue
Fans will be unsurprised to find that they’ve reinvented themselves on Born Horses, presenting a lush, baroque, dreamlike canvas upon which Donahue paints deftly with spoken word. The music is transcendent at times, with his lyrical verses transporting listeners to somewhere unusual. His hushed persona seems to sit somewhere between jazz poet and new age guru.
“It’s a different bird inside of me,” affirms Donahoe, “and I didn’t expect it. For those that hear it for the first time, it can seem quite startling, maybe even polarising. It caught me the same way. For quite some time I struggled with it on the inside.”
Some of the pieces began as voice notes, recorded alongside the Hudson River in the Catskills, New York, where Donahue lives. At first they were placeholders, which he expected to fix up when he got to a “fancy studio with very expensive, old European microphones” – though the different bird won the day.
“It was very humbling, because I was thinking I could think my way through these vocals into something that was more pop-friendly, radio-friendly, pristine, clear, easier to mix; and I couldn’t.”
The attentively eared will just about be able to make out the lapping of water on Mood Swings. Donahue confirms it’s the Hudson River, and that’s not all: “I was sitting there in the early mornings when the steamships would go up and the seagulls were squabbling over fish heads and things. We spent quite a lot of money and time trying to ‘de-seagull’ the voice tapes to little avail.” He laughs at the absurdity of this.
What did Grasshopper think when he heard Donahue’s new voice? “I kind of saw it as this Brecht and Weill thing,” he says enthusiastically, “which for me was almost theatrical. I could see him onstage, and we’re the pit orchestra down here with our brass and saxophones and trumpets accompanying the words; and I kind of approached it like that.”
The album is dedicated to two former teachers: the beat poet Robert Creeley and the minimalist drone musician Tony Conrad, who also played at one time with Faust and a prototype version of the Velvet Underground (it was the book in his pocket that gave them their name).
Regarding Creeley, Donahue says: “I wouldn’t consider myself a poet; I would consider myself inspired by his economy of words. The information is in the intervals, these gaps between words. That was something very early on that I paid close attention to.”
Tony Conrad was teaching us about the Situationists, then the Fluxus movement; and I’m like 18 and having my mind blown
Grasshopper
Grasshopper had been studying maths at the University of Buffalo, but then decided to switch to media studies when he read about Conrad in Up-Tight, Victor Bockris’s book about the Velvets. Conrad became a mentor. “He was great,” Grasshopper enthuses.
“His class was called Electronic Image Analysis, but he’d talk about music; he played music, he showed us his film, The Flicker; he was an early performance artist, he did video art, painting, conceptual and minimalist stuff and then played with Faust. He was teaching us about the Situationists, then the Fluxus movement; and I’m like 18 and having my mind blown.”
Born Horses is more maximalist than minimalist at times, with deep roots in progressive jazz: Donahue cites Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way as a formative influence, while Grasshopper was schooled in jazz by an uncle who worked at Atlantic Records. Albums by Ornette Coleman, Davis and Don Cherry made their way into his collection – an interesting accompaniment to someone with a burgeoning punk rock habit.
“My brother was more into progressive rock,” he adds, meaning he could hear Asia, Yes and Genesis coming through the bedroom wall. Which may go some way to explaining why he lists Mercury Rev as “doo-wop hard bop beat punk no wave garage rock hip-hop voodoo jazz sweet soul harmelodic polkadot space blues” on his X profile.
I’m never trying to just sound as though we’re on a nature walk… These are quite real, symbolic parts of a psyche
Jonathan Donahue
Another influence is the animal kingdom, with references to creatures appearing throughout their work, whether it’s flies and moles in the lyrics of Holes, a rabbit on the cover of Snowflake Midnight and a cat on its accompanying album Strange Attractor, or titles like Spiders And Flies or Chasing A Bee from 1991. Born Horses includes the title track, A Bird Of No Address and There’s Always Been A Bird In Me adding to the ever-expanding menagerie.
“These are just some of the inner windings that find themselves later circling around on a piece of vinyl,” explains Donahue, whose lyrics are often influenced by his dreams. “But it’s always a metaphor. I’m never trying to just sound as though we’re on a nature walk for 40 minutes. These are quite real, symbolic parts of a psyche that calls itself Jonathan at the moment.”
Prog mentions that Mercury Rev started out jamming to wildlife documentaries back in the late 1980s. “Absolutely; it’s one of the first ways we would write,” Donahue remembers. “We’d turn on late-night BBC nature programmes in America, and we would just sort of play along, Grasshopper and myself, and, at times, David Baker.
“Just playing as the platypus makes his way from his little hut to the stream, interpreting what happens to him along the way. It was a narrative that we could focus on and use as sort of the hub of the three spokes.”
One of those spokes might have been removed, but Donahue and Grasshopper are birds of a feather still flocking together; and, boy, are they different cats.
