Mercury Rev’s debut album is probably the most impressive album the band ever produced, not to mention one of the most eccentric psychedelic expeditions since The Soft Machine’s Third twenty years prior. The sheer epic-scale of Yerself Is Steam is incomparable to the later work of Mercury Rev, who after several changes of band members managed to lose their most magical quality. Thankfully, their original brilliance can still be witnessed in this album, which is as accessible as it is extraordinary.
The album evokes a sort of grunge-ness, but not the kind you may expect to recognise. Unlike Dinosaur Jr or Sonic Youth, the album is not weighed down with grunge allusions; instead it is a reflection on loneliness, adventure, boredom and stardom, as interpreted by the truly unique soundscapes the band evoke. Each composition commences and concludes like a teenage memory, despite the band’s varying use of genre and style, which adds a playful spontaneity to the dreamy dynamics.
The opening track, Chasing a Bee begins as though everything has already concluded, but quickly establishes the Himalayan-sized scope of the album. Beautiful and harsh at the same time, it is a spiralling expression of superfluous energy, both personal and interplanetary. Syringe Mouth has the aesthetic of a punk song put through some kind of Hendrix-ian torture chamber, while Coney Island Cyclones has all the charm of a surrealist trip through the Bermuda Triangle.
The mind-bending tracks that remain will have to be discovered by listeners themselves, as they border on the indescribable. Nevertheless, the lasting impression Yerself Is Steam leaves on your subconscious, is a resounding sense of recovering something lost, or remembering something long forgotten. However you choose to interpret it, Yerself Is Steam is a significant contribution to the school of psychedelic rock as much as it is one of the most creative rock albums of the nineties.
Albert Ayler’s Witches and Devils is probably as ambitious a jazz album you’ll ever subject your ears to. The music oscillates, intoxicated with a sort of fever that broods and shifts in the murky, limitless depths of free-jazz territory. Not very popular among casual Sunday-morning jazz listeners, Ayler’s approach was always something entirely new and exciting, and his albums, however challenging, are important documents of his unique and powerful vision.
No doubt, anybody listening to Witches and Devils for the first time will be overwhelmed with the drama of Ayler’s expression. I can’t offer an easy-to-swallow interpretation or explanation for what is meant by Ayler’s arrangements, however I offer this review as my best advice for appreciating him. Ayler’s jazz resembles a junkyard of shadowy figures that slowly reveal themselves to a listener that is both vulnerable to new ideas, and patient. Although some very bold sounds are operating in the foreground, it is the small, almost ignorable musical debris in the background, such as Sonny Murray’s epileptic drums and the haunting bass of Earle Henderson and Henry Grimes, which truly lift Ayler’s melodies to a dizzying height.
Not for the faint-hearted, the title track Witches and Devils is the musical equivalent of a failed exorcism; partly melancholy and partly insane, it sails into an abyss of uncertainty and regret, finding its resolve only in the cathartic climax of its initial melody. Spirits is comparatively busier, but no less focused. It evokes the feeling of being preoccupied with one’s own thoughts and wanderings. The lengthy composition Holy Holy is a sort of synthesis of the two before mentioned tracks, however more erratic and playful, it resembles a sort of dance music with amnesia. The climax is no less special, concluding the album with an arresting feeling of pensiveness that lasts long after the music has finished.
For the brave and the curious, Ayler has many dazzling tricks up his sleeve that grow increasingly fascinating with every listen. It won’t appeal to every taste, but then great music rarely does.
