Mercury Rev’s debut album. Yerself is Steam arrived in my mailbox seemingly during the height of the British indie “shoegazer” boom of the early 90’s. Despite being not at all British (the band hailed from Buffalo, originally), Mercury Rev were touted by many as being spiritually akin to the shoegazers, given their hazy, murky, fuzz-laden sound. Honestly speaking, as a big fan of bands like Ride, Lush, Curve, Chapterhouse and the like, I didn’t really hear it. To my ears, Mercury Rev just sounded like freaked-out, acid-damaged psychedelic rock that wasn’t particularly tethered to any particular scene or sound. Later albums found Mercury Rev totally changing up their music (following the departure of original lead singer David Baker), and the invocations of all-things shoegazer sorta went away.
While it wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, I did kinda dig that first album, slipping tracks from same onto mixtapes for various friends. Incongruously sandwiched between comparativley straightforward rock, songs from Yerself is Steam usually prompted confusion and annoyance, which I found rewarding. I never bothered to pick up another record of theirs, especially as they started to leaaning toward alt.country. They since released nine more albums, and I couldn’t tell you much about any of them, but I still think Yerself is Steam is pretty entertaining.
The only reason I’m bringing them up today, however, is that I only recently learned that the video from the album’s first track, “Chasing a Bee’ – a suitably bizarre slice of meandering psychedelica flecked with avalanches of guitar noise -– was filmed within the forebidding confines of North Border Island, the fabled leper quarantine off the Bronx that once counted Typhoid Mary as an occupant. You can read more about the infamous location here.
Last I heard, North Border Island was still strictly off-limits to the public, so how the freaks in Mercury Rev were able to shoot a (typically surreal) video there is a bit of a mystery.
In any case, here it is. It’s weird. You’ve been warned.
Recent Comments