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Mercury Rev.
 "It seems like a long time ago - we finished the record last Spring, around May," says Mercury Rev's Jeff Mercel, explaining the band's long absence. "And then began the process of putting things together to start touring the record, and now we're in the early stages of that touring process, having played a bunch of shows in Europe in November with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. We're about to head back to Europe for about a month of dates, America a little later in the spring and then hopefully down to Australia quite soon. I can't tell you exactly when, but we'll be touring over the next year."
'The Secret Migration' is something of a departure from what we might expect from Mercury Rev, but Mercel assures me that the responses he's heard have been quite good.
"People are telling us that they feel that it's maybe a lighter, more optimistic, hopeful version of Mercury Rev. You know, it's hard to tell you what we think of the album; although we've been with the songs for a long time it is still sort of close to us, and you can't always get an accurate opinion or take on it. But, you know, people are certainly responding to the more immediate, optimistic, hopeful threads that are quite present in the album."
It still, of course, has that signature sound to it, courtesy of long-time producer Dave Fridmann (also known for his extensive work with The Flaming Lips). "He is important to us. We have a very long history with him." Actually, Fridmann was once the bass player of Mercury Rev, and Rev frontman Jonathan Donahue was once a guitarist in The Flaming Lips.
"He's a friend, he is someone who we can work with very closely and we can be very frank and honest with one another when we're working on something, which I think is beneficial for the music, to be able to speak your mind and not have it be a personal thing, just purely commenting on changes to the music or how we're progressing with a particular song. He might come in and say, 'you know what? This song isn't working.' And he'll be very frank and very coarse in his language, but we understand that that's just the way that it is. And in the same way, he might be slaving away on a mix of a particular song, and we might come into the control room and say, 'that sounds horrible, start again.' And he'll say, 'well, you're probably right.' So we sort of have an even footing with him, the way that old friends do."
Given that the band has been around for quite some time, and exists without really belonging to a scene, I ask what Mercel thinks Mercury Rev's place is in the scheme of things.
"You know, that's a harder question to answer. It won't be fully understood probably for some time. We're a band that with 'Deserter Songs' sort of achieved some commercial success, or at least awareness, there's a whole bunch of records before that that maybe didn't get the same attention, and it may take longer for the whole catalogue to sink into the public consciousness. At which point you might get an idea of where we fit in. Are we influential to other bands? I don't know. It's hard for me to say, I don't have a lot of exposure to other bands. We live in a remote area, and there isn't much of a music scene where we are, we just tend to do what we do. So it's kind of hard to see where we fit into the larger picture. That might be a little short-sighted on our part, but it's not something we're aware of."
And finally, although it seems like the band will be gracing our shores, I can't get a concrete answer about whether this will include Adelaide. But it seems our town is in a bit of a frenzy at the moment, and if you lot keep selling out all the shows around town, maybe they won't need too much convincing.
"We played Adelaide last time... who knows? We'll see what happens. I remember a really good record store in Adelaide... Big Star, was it? And we went to a really sad casino, I hate to say. But who knows, maybe we'll be back in Adelaide - you never can tell!"
Ben Revi
 | 'The Secret Migration' is out now through FMR. |
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