Stream: Mercury Rev, ‘The Queen of Swans’

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Grasshopper [Sean Mackowiak] and Mercury rev co-founder Jonathan Donahue
Mercury Rev's Grasshopper (Sean Mackowiak) and Jonathan Donahue

It’s been seven years since the last album from Mercury Rev — too long for fans of the art-rock explorers’ expansive music. That wait ends Sept. 18 when the band releases “The Light in You,” an album that is being said to “reflect a particularly turbulent era in the lives of Grasshopper [née Sean Mackowiak] and co-founder Jonathan Donahue, of calamities both personal and physical, but also rebirths and real births (Grasshopper became a father for the first time in 2014).”  The album finds Mercury Rev working without producer Dave Fridmann (due to travel and scheduling conflicts), with Donahue and Grasshopper at the controls, abetted by engineer Scott Petito and bassist Anthony Molina. New song “The Queen of Swans” has the epic feel of the music on albums like “Deserter’s Songs” (1998) and “All Is Dream” (2001). Just beautiful.

||| Stream: “The Queen of Swans”