eclipsed: The big surprise is that after seven years Mercury Rev has released a new CD. In the beginning it sounds completely different than earlier records from you, but with each further hearing the Mercury Rev sound comes better to the fore ...
Jonathan Donahue: The record came to us. We've been playing relentlessly in the seven years since the last CD and have been on tour. But we live in the mountains and have a different sense of time than usual in the music business. Seven years is an infinity in the music world. But that's nothing to us. We wrote a long time on the record. It took shape about a year and a half ago. We went into the studio, and what followed went really fast.
eclipsed: How did you avoid the Mercury Rev trademark traps?
Grasshopper: You can't completely change your identity, but you can change your approach to the things you do. On the one hand, we were looking for a very dense network of rhythms to make everything much bigger and lighter in terms of harmony and sound. This has allowed us to work much more with sound details that we have incorporated into the songs through months of precision work. Every song is a little movie for us. A part of our lives that wanted to be properly represented.
eclipsed: Speaking of movies. The association chains were not easy to draw, because on the one hand you unfold these fantasy sound worlds, on the other hand you have texts very suitable for everyday use.
Jonathan Donahue: This combination of fairy tale and modern life is in our DNA. Each of our albums works like a children's book. We love this aspect and it is what defines us. No matter whether we use feedback or an oboe, it always remains a kind of children's story. This album has many of those moments, we think. It is a hard piece of work to let this side of us work in a contemporary context. We don't want to sound like 1940 just to give our songs a component of timelessness. We want to reach people emotionally today. Not for nothing did it take us seven years. We heard every song over and over until it worked. We're not one of those bands that have to keep remembering, but we know when it works.
eclipsed: The lyrics of the album often stand in stark contrast to the music. Sometimes the music is full of happiness and lightness, but the lyrics are desperate.
Jonathan Donahue: This is especially true for the song "Central Park East". Central Park is a wonderful, inspiring place, for seven-year-olds as well as for seventy-year-olds. In such places it can sometimes be frightening to be overwhelmed by something so beautiful that one cannot find words for it. When you are confronted with something bigger than yourself, it usually triggers an unfulfilled desire. Then one moves between two poles, which often have to do with fulfilment and fear. The song is about someone who sees love everywhere around him and asks himself how love might come to him.
eclipsed: Isn't that the general concept of romance?
Jonathan Donahue: Exactly, because romanticism is not about the fulfillment of love, but about the longing for love when you don't have one. To loss and the feeling of being less yourself than the beauty that surrounds you. Byron, Shelley or Keats never wrote about how nice it is to be in love. It's always about the pain of being cut off from love.
eclipsed: Isn't the whole history of rock based exactly on this feeling, because in the end everything comes from the blues?
Jonathan Donahue: People can simply do more with it, because it is easier to be sad than happy. What's more, it's easier for us to share someone else's sadness than their happiness. I think the Central Park song is one of the best songs we've ever recorded. If tomorrow the world would end, I would still be happy that we at least did this song.
eclipsed: Are you romantics?
Jonathan Donahue: Absolutely. At least more than rockers. I love Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole. I also love the Ramones, but the romantic ballads come out of my bloodstream faster than the punk songs.
More information:
www.mercuryrev.com
Interview: Wolf Campman
