Born Horses

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskills mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richlyswelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in theslipstream of the grander Hudson river, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, fears. Asound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voiceof incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev's ninth album Born Horsesspring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searchesit's soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision linked to their exalted past whilst quiteunlike anything they have created before?The answer is somewhere between the homes of founder members Jonathan Donahue (the hamlet of MtTremper) and Grasshopper (the town of Kingston), in their veins and brains of their now-legendarytapping of musical cosmology, and the vital presence of new permanent member Marion Genser (keys),plus long-term ally Jesse Chandler (keys) and guests Jeff Lipstein (drums), Martin Keith (double bass)and Jim Burgess (trumpet). A place that feeds off the levitating mood of their last album, 2019'sexpansive tribute Bobbie Gentry's The Delta Sweete Revisited, and the instrumental psych explorationsunder the names of Harmony Rockets and Mercury Rev's Clear Light Ensemble, and the spiritualguidance of avant-garde artist Tony Conrad and Beat poet Robert Creeley, to whom Born Horses isdedicated.Born Horses opens with 'Mood Swings'. A trumpet, evoking mariachi and the windswept terrain of thedesert prairie, opens up to a dynamic panorama of sound, wandering through and enveloping Jonathan'sintimate recitation, conflating memories and confessions of feelings trapped and unwrapped: "My moodswings come and go as they like / rebellious fickle teenagers, unable to decide." It establishes BornHorses' tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of humanexperience, buffeted by the currents all around us. The flightiness of feelings is further explored by themetaphor of a bird, most clearly in 'Bird Of No Address' and the album's pulsating finale 'There HasAlways Been A Bird In Me'.The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track 'Born Horses', was chosen because it'swords resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight ("I dreamed we were bornhorses waiting for wings") and the phrase "You and I" that appears at different junctures on the album.This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of one self.The concept of Born Horses began pre-pandemic, and then once Mercury Rev were allowed to tour andrecord again, Marion Genser moved over from her native Austria to join Jonathan in the Catskills, andMercury Rev in full flight. A classically-trained painter as well as a musician, Marion has become aninvaluable addition to the Rev chemical compound.More inspiration was provided by the spirits of Tony Conrad and Robert Creeley, acolytes of progressivethought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo when Jonathan and Grasshopper werestudents. Amongst other credentials, Conrad was an associate of John Cale and The VelvetUnderground, Creeley an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets.