Back in 1998 as the decade and century rushed to a conclusion people started fretting about Y2K, the millennium bug and aeroplanes dropping out of the sky. Mercury Rev had been a minor US alt- rock band with some major drug problems and poor sales and were about to be dropped. Their manager left and the drummer followed. Jonathan Donahue slipped into depression and took refuge in childhood favourites, fairy tales set to classical music. From this chaos and dissolution came Deserter's Songs, an album that turned out to be one of 1998's best records.
Holed up in the Catskill Mountains, writing on a piano and reconnecting with guitarist Grasshopper, sharing studio time with The Flaming Lips (a band Donahue was a member of at the same time) they began to record the songs that would become Deserter's Songs, a fragile, melodic, gently wasted album, filled with acts of leaving, with ghosts and farewells. They both assumed this would be Mercury Rev's last throw of the dice. Somehow during the sessions the band/ duo signed to V2 and the money that followed allowed them to complete the album, filling the songs out with Dave Fridman, adding strings, horns, woodwind. This song, originally written by Donahue back in 1989, was found on an old cassette and reworked...
There's a back to the land/ get our heads together in the country/ Bob Dylan after his motorcycle crash feel to Deserter's Songs. Add in to the fin de siecle vibe circulating by 1998, replacing all that mid 90s confidence. 'I got us on a highway/ I got us in a car', Jonathan sings, leaving somewhere. Later on in the songs it's about her, 'the goddess on a highway/ goddess in a car', leaving. 'And I know it ain't gonna last'. The rest of the album sounds similarly blasted and wrecked, the sound of some people trying to hold it together- Holes, Tonite It Shows, Opus 40, Hudson Line. At the end the final song opens with what sounds like a house music piano riff being played on a harpsichord, the final splendour of Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp.
Before he started writing the songs for the album Donahue had been approached by The Chemical Brothers to play on what would become The Private Psychedelic Reel. At a time when he'd more or less given up and hit the bottom, the request and recording re- energised him. In the UK, Deserter's Songs was then championed by Tom and Ed, especially in the NME and Melody Maker, and it all took off. The NME made it album of the year, the monthlies gave it five stars. The Chemical Brothers provided a remix adding their crunching 90s swirl of FX and beats to Mercury Rev's 19th century chamber music- and picking out the word that is the opposite of the album's main lyrical themes- 'hello...'
