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Empire Statement

Who would figure a loose-knit art rock collective that took root at University at Buffalo’s Media Studies Department would go on to be one of music’s most revered, groundbreaking acts?

Indeed, it all started for Mercury Rev here in Buffalo in the mid 1980s. The seemingly misfit troupe of student/artists/musicians set up shop creating soundtracks for student films (the band has long credited on album notes that all recordings were done direct to 35-millimeter magnetic tape) while its members studied under the tutelage of noted UB faculty like avant-garde musician/filmmaker Tony Conrad and the late poet Robert Creeley.

Comprising singer David Baker, singer/guitarist Jonathan Donahue, guitarist Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak, bassist Dave Fridmann, flutist Suzanne Thorpe and drummer Jimy Chambers, Mercury Rev excelled in the inspired invention of psychedelic pastiches of noise and dark, chaotic instrumentation and rhythms and obtuse lyrical abstraction. Its sound set the band apart from the pack of guitar bands making waves in college radio in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Along the way, Mercury Rev crossed paths with a like-minded troupe of freaks from Oklahoma called the Flaming Lips. The two acts would from then on forever be linked, with Donahue joining the ranks of the Lips as a guitar player in the early 1990s and Dave Fridmann becoming the band’s perennial producer and a consistent studio member—helping the Lips to cultivate a sound that has made them international vanguard superstars.

A pair of albums in the early 1990s, Yerself Is Steam and Boces, firmly placed Mercury Rev amongst the zeitgeist of bubbling underground American rock. Accolades poured in, particularly in Europe; in fact, the band would find their largest audiences would always be an ocean away. Mercury Rev toured throughout Europe, then in the US supporting Dinosaur Jr., and in a second stage slot on Lollapalooza, but commercial success was non-existent and in-fighting amongst members was rampant.

1995’s See You On the Other Side would be the band’s first without Dave Baker and the shift in sonic shape and texture was clear. The psych noisenik touches were there, but toned down. At the forefront were beautiful melodies and massed orchestral parts. Fridmann has retired from touring but stayed on as the band’s producer and studio bassist. Other Side failed to make a ripple and the band was ready to pack it in, but decided to make just one more album crafted from the band’s new home in the Catskill Mountains.

It is 1998’s Deserter’s Songs that not only stands as Mercury Rev’s greatest feat but also one of the most important records of the last two decades. Britain’s music weekly NME—along with a slew of high-profile music mags—named it album of the year, calling Mercury Rev “America’s most pioneering band.”

The music of Deserter’s Songs marked an even further break from the band’s earlier sound. It was dark and mysterious with a balance of baroque intricacy and stripped, rustic wonder. Here Mercury Rev managed brought the bowed saw into the rock lexicon. Comparisons to the tempered majesty and uncompromising, stylistically chameleon-like nature of The Band abounded—and the presence of Levon Helm and Garth Hudson on Deserter’s Songs only fueled them.

The record wasn’t the band’s last but it was the final for founding members Suzanne Thorpe and Jimy Chambers. Chambers, who wrote one of Deserter’s best song, the UK charting “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp,” moved back to Buffalo to focus on a family and starting his own band, Odiorne.

Donahue and Grasshopper continued on with shifting lineups but the same Rev raison d’etre, managing 2001’s All Is Dream, a sprawling, widescreen odyssey of panoramic orch pop symphonies, and 2005’s exceptional The Secret Migration.

Now, in 2006, the band has issued its first career-spanning collection, The Essential Mercury Rev: Stilness Breathes (1991-2006), a disc’s worth of singles and favored album tracks along with a second disc of rarities. The band returns to the city where it all began for their first appearance in almost eight years.

Mercury Rev along with special guest Odiorne play the newly reopened Tralf this Saturday, December 2 at 8pm.