Deserter's Songs (Instrumentals)

Album review

Deserter's Songs: Instrumental is basically for anyone who felt like they couldn't get enough of a good thing. While the original album was remixed, remastered, and otherwise fooled with to fine effect, it appears that this this set -- which mirrors that one song-for-song -- is literally the same recording sans the voices. Deserter's Songs was the album on which Mercury Rev lost its trademark, mischievous, and occasionally anarchic sense of humor, and became more ambitious musically; the truth is they focused less on adventurous music (if occasionally unprofessionally played) and more on a traditional symphonic pop framework, and Dave Fridmann's growing studio prowess, which one can hear without the interruption of the human voice, his Theremin or his Mellotron, Suzanne Thorpe's flute, Jonathan Donahue's chamberlain strings, Rachel Handman's violins, and brass, vibraphones, and Grasshopper's woodwinds. Only "Goddess on a Hiway" (the only song Fridmann didn't mix) comes off as anything like a song here. The rest of the instrumental versions of Deserter's Songs may sound less mopey and emotionally cathartic than its original version does, but without that pathos, and with all its blissed-out panoramic and dynamic "psychedelic" scope, it's also rather dull; coming off as a series of unfocused cues for a mythical soundtrack rather than as an actual album. Deserter's Songs: Instrumental is for MR completists only.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo