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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 unwrapp
