The Year: 1998The Album: Mercury Rev, Deserter's Songs
Who it Influenced: Grandaddy, My Morning Jacket, Andrew Bird, Arcade Fire, The Shins, Youth Lagoon
"I remember the first mix-CD I ever got, from a friend when I used to work in this movie theatre, the first song on it was the opening track from Deserter's Songs," Alan Palomo recalled to me, last year, in speaking of the dreams-come-true nature of working with producer (and the Flaming Lips' 'fifth Beatle') Dave Fridmann. It made clear a sentiment that the release of Youth Lagoon's The Year of Hibernation had me already thinking about: Mercury Rev's fourth album as a from-a-past-generation touchstone for a new crop of early-20s indie acts.
Deserter's Songs had already been hugely influential on its release; bands like My Morning Jacket, The Shins, and Arcade Fire were among those who were taken by its grandeur, its sincerity, its devotion to chasing dreams both musical and otherwise; the way it peeled out like a wide-screen vision. But where albums that once would've seemed like of-the-era peers —Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin— have grown only increasingly revered over the years, the mythology of Mercury Rev had faded.
In such, it seemed surprising to stumble upon Youth Lagoon, and find someone so utterly devoted to the sound of Deserter's Songs, to its mix of painful, intimate confession and sweeping, giddy grandeur. Yet, one listen to the LP's evergreen opener "Holes" is enough of a reminder of why Deserter's Songs so struck listeners in its day; and why the album will never really fade away.
- Full review: Mercury Rev, Deserter's Songs
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