| Deserter's Songs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Mercury Rev | ||||
| Released | September 29, 1998 | |||
| Recorded | Tarbox Road Studios, NRS Studios, Six Hours Studios | |||
| Genre | Art rock Chamber pop Dream pop Indie pop |
|||
| Length | 44:39 | |||
| Label | V2 Records | |||
| Producer | Dave Fridmann, Jonathan Donahue | |||
| Mercury Rev chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Singles from Deserter's Songs | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Fluffhouse Music | (10/10) link |
| Robert Christgau | (C+) link |
| Q | June 2010 |
| NME | (9/10) link |
| Pitchfork Media (1998) | (8.5/10) link |
| Pitchfork Media (2011) | (9.3/10) link |
| Entertainment Weekly | (A-) link |
| Clash (magazine) | link |
Deserter's Songs is the fourth studio album by the Buffalo, New York-based rock band Mercury Rev, released in late September 1998. British music magazine NME named Deserter's Songs album of the year for 1998. Limited edition copies of the album came in a brown cardboard envelope-like package, with a stamp on the cover postmarked with the release date, as well as two art postcards.
The success of this album was a pleasant surprise for the band. After the commercial failure of See You on the Other Side, which Donahue considered to be the band's best album, they decided to make one more record entirely for themselves, ignoring commercial influences, and expecting to split up shortly afterward. Surprisingly, Deserter's Songs was their most successful album, and made them big celebrities in the UK and Europe, also making a smaller mark in the US.
The hidden track at the end of "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp" is played on the Tettix Wave Accumulator, an instrument built by Donahue and Grasshopper. Reportedly, two versions of the instrument exist--one for recording that takes up half of Grasshopper's basement, and a smaller one for the road.
A 10th anniversary edition of the album[1] was rumored to be released on March 5, 2007, but never came to fruition. Mercury Rev released their seventh studio album Snowflake Midnight on Deserter's Songs' actual 10-year anniversary, September 29, 2008.
In May 2011 a fully instrumental edition of the album was released. In the same month, the band also staged a series of concerts at venues throughout Europe in which the whole album was performed live.
The song "Holes" was used in the 2000 film Panic, starring William H. Macy and Neve Campbell.
Contents |
All lyrics by Jonathan Donahue, except "Hudson Line" by Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak, and "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp" by Jimy Chambers. All music by Jonathan Donahue and Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak.
Upon the album's release, a 6-track promo EP was issued, featuring covers recorded as B-sides from live recording sessions. The EP was bundled with copies of the album sold at Best Buy stores.
A special edition of the album was released in 2005 with a bonus DVD, featuring an album-length companion film to Deserter's Songs as well as two music videos (directed by Anton Corbijn) and an audio remix track:
In 2011, a further reissue of the album surfaced, this time a double-disc "deluxe edition" via V2/Cooperative. Unlike previous repackagings, which featured tracks also found spread across various singles and promotional releases, this edition contained a full disc's worth of exclusive material, dubbed "Deserted Songs." Tracklisting for disc two:
|
||||||||||||||||||||