Record: Yerself Is Steam
Label: Mint Films
Year of Release: 1991
Sounds like: Space Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Noise
United States
American noise/spatial and post rock band Mercury Rev, is a cult group from Buffalo New York, it has suffered mutations and transformations from the beginning of it's career to the present. It was one of the acts that shared some interesting similitudes and scene with others alternative fellas like The Flaming Lips, Yo la Tengo, Guided By Voices, Grandaddy; even Stereolab or Pavement.
Yerself Steam was their first record and also a very ambitious one, because, even though it traded and shared ideas with some of the people mentioned above, it was also clear that their path to what later turned into albums such as Desrter Songs or Secret Migration was noticeable from the start.
This album has also an important fact around it and it is that it features David Barker on vocals, who left the band shortly after, leaving this task on Jonathan Donahue.
Does it Work?
Regina Says:It is really thrilling to see how Mercury Rev started as a noisy, shoegazer band that tried with echoes, put some quirky stuff and noises here and there and later began to create more pompous and orchestrated sounds in things like Deserter songs, Some people see this a a betrayal to their primal doctrine and and sound, which I think is kinda silly. To me Deserter Songs is more a cathartic experiment rather than a change of formula or recipe. I think Deserter Songs was meant to be a deep exploration and sad conceptualization of the entire band's spectre, whereas Yerself Steam is something totally different, being their first record, they were just trying to reach somewhere. Hence, the sort of changed imagery and sound.
I think this record is trippy, seriously trippy, yes, it shared soil with other trippy, druggy, stuff happening at the time, but I think the good point about this record is that they put some surreal stuff in it, but the result is not dense extremely experimental or tiring,it is not ''neo prog'' or whatever. It sounds even like complex college rock. Which makes me feel that Mercury rev was in the end a very clever pop band. If you check out songs like chasing a bee or black and blue, those things are huge intricate pop songs, space pop operas filled with amazing arrangements. It is not Layers of sound over sound, over sound, noise on noise blah blah blah.
These themes are trying to get somewhere and wherever it goes, it's juicy and lushy and magical.
However, I do think this thing really needs to be remastered, I appreciate the lo fi aspect, but some parts sound extremely low (not in a good way), which affects the experience.
Rate: Very Good
Hugo Menanth Says: Just to take it to a metaphorical concept: this album is the psychedelia once all the hippies are dead. So the old speech of happiness and liberty turned into epicness and chaos, songs that you hear and can't tell what the hell you're actually listening to. Some of them last three minutes, some dangerously rub the 15 minutes. Some sound like you're going crazy.
There are different versions of Yerself is Steam with different tracklists. In any case this is a colorful and catchy record that can change your perception of music and musicians altogether.
Is it overly megalomaniac? Of course! Like any great record. Is there too much noise? More than too much. In fact, the last song is made of whistles, distorted voice, interference, phantasmagorical signals etc..
Can you get lost in it? For the good and the bad, yes. Like any good drug.
Stormy albums for stormy brains. If your brain is a soft tissue, try to keep it away from this thing.
Rate: Extraordinary