MERCURYREV
This year marks 30 years since the birth of Mercury Rev, and across that time they have traversed an eclectic and engulfing terrain of sounds. From earlier explorations in noisy psychedelic eruptions to later craft ing deft, tender and dreamy compositions, they even ended up as unexpected ostensible pop stars in the UK with the huge success of 1998’s Deserter’s Songs, a benchmark album that has retained such a degree of love and potency that 2018 saw them tour the album and play it in its entirety.
However, for their latest move forward the group have dipped back 50 years into musical history. In 1968, the country singer Bobbie Gentry followed up her No.1 album Ode To Billie Joe with The Delta Sweete, a concept album about life in the Deep South. Yet success didn’t follow, with the album never topping No.132 in the same Billboard chart she had previously knocked The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band off the top of with her debut. Mercury Rev have re-recorded the somewhat forgotten cult classic in full with a seriesof guest vocalists: a different woman singing on each of the 12 songs.
ALL-STAR CAST
The Delta Sweete’s guest vocalists in full
1 Okolona River Bottom Band Norah Jones
2 Big Boss Man Hope Sandoval
3 Reunion Rachel Goswell
4 Parchman Farm Carice van Houten
5 Mornin’ Glory Laetitia Sadier
6 Sermon Margo Price
7 Tobacco Road Susanne Sundfør
8 Penduli Pendulum Vashti Bunyan, Kaela Sinclair
9 Jessye Lisabeth Phoebe Bridgers
10 Refractions Marissa Nadler
11 Courtyard Beth Orton
12 Ode To Billie Joe Lucinda Williams