With a world tour and the release of their eighth studio album, fans should expect the near future of Mercury Rev to be bigger and better than ever.
Lead guitarist, Grasshopper, describes the band’s latest work, ‘The Light In You’, as: “Surreal… cinematic and... psychedelic… I think we managed to make it even bigger… so we’re really happy about that, because that was kind of our goal.”
Many elements inspired the meaning behind the album's title; literally and metaphorically. “[The title] is a line from a song I wrote; ‘If I were a moth I’d fly to the light in you’. On the one level it was a love song… I had a baby boy who was one-year old and it was kind of about that experience.
“On a larger scope, it was about everybody finding that divine spark inside of them. That light that you use to create art or music or just that thing you find in desperate times but it gets you through our lonely time or breakup or something like that.”
Among the 11 diverse tracks, Grasshopper shared his favourite song off the album. “I love them all but I kind of really like 'Central Park East' and I’d have to say because it kind of encompasses the whole album. Jonathan and I had a lot of fun writing that together. Lyrically, it’s about Central Park… it’s like a little oasis in the middle of New York City… we like the irony in that image.”
With the music video for ‘Are You Ready’ released, fans have had the opportunity to get a sneak peak of the band’s latest sound. “'Rainy Day Record’, the last song [would make a great music video]. I think it would be this crazy, flipped-out experience that’s very surreal; going through record shops and trying to find records while you’re on acid or something and everything’s melting away.
“'Central Park East' would be great too. Probably, something to do with the loneliest boy in New York… where this young kid is in the fantasy land of Central Park – which is a trip in itself – and he’s trying to figure out where he fits into it all.”
Mercury Rev has been performing live shows for 20 years and counting, so there’s no doubt the live experience for the band has changed. Although they have a lot of festivals on their plate, they prefer to book the more intimate and personal shows. “We’ve been doing a lot of festivals lately; especially on this tour that we are coming up to… Although, we intentionally asked our booking agent to play us at some smaller clubs because we like that intimacy where you can see the faces in the crowd; get their immediate reaction [to the music].”
In early December, the band will we touching down in Australia. “We love coming to Australia and I actually have a lot of family in Melbourne, my grandfather was Sicilian and he moved here so I have like a million cousins in Melbourne.”
Australia is one of the many countries Mercury Rev will be touring. “We haven’t played London in a long time and we have so many friends there. [Keen] to go to Japan, haven’t been to Japan in a long time… We really want to go to South America because we’ve been to Brazil one time but we’ve never really tour there… Anyway, we love that we’re going to Australia in December; get some nice warm weather!”
With the rest of 2015 already mapped out, Grasshopper speaks about 2016. “We have a personal project but I can’t really talk about it because it’s a surprise! The other thing is, we want to tour a lot in the spring then play festivals and stuff; it’d be cool to play some of the big festivals again… Get out there and get muddy!”
'The Light Inside Me' is released 2 October.
Written by Connor O’Connor
Mercury Rev Tour Dates
Sat 5 Dec - Fairgrounds Festival (Berry)Mon 7 Dec - Oxford Arts Factory (Sydney)
Tue 8 Dec - Max Watts (Melbourne)
Fri 11 Dec - The Zoo (Brisbane)
