super groovy delicious bite: deserter's songs

Mercury Rev came back from the brink with the captivating catharsis and dreamy ambiance of this symphonic magnum opus. The group had established themselves in the UK with their first two albums ('Yerself is Steam' and 'Boces') recorded with frontman David Baker. When Baker left the band, they carried on with 'See You on the Other Side'; but the album failed to chart and the ensuing tour left them in debt and disarray. Frontman Jonathan Donahue fell into a deep depression until he was contacted by the Chemical Brothers to collaborate on their song “The Private Psychedelic Reel”. The experience revitalized Donahue and he contacted Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak to begin working on new music together in upstate New York.

Donahue reveals: "Only in hindsight did the Catskill Mountains seem like a place of refuge for me. When you're at one of the bottoms, and in this time after 'See You On The Other Side' some of these bottoms involved alcohol, they involved substances, they involved nervous breakdown, all of these very clichéd things. But they're clichéd for very good reasons - you have to go through them, you have to see through the illusion of them, but at the time when you're at the bottom you're not thinking 'while I'm down here, now is the best time to start writing the masterpiece. If I keep getting more fucked up, the better the masterpiece will be.' I don't adhere to the argument that when you're really fucked up, that's when you'll write your great tome. When you're really fucked up, you're so self-centered, involved in your own inner workings, your inner gears are so covered in sludge and violence they're worn down. It was only when I was coming back up from that that I realized it was a good place that I was in, but at the time I wasn't thinking about mountains and creeks and nature, I was so absorbed in being at the bottom. My vision was so narrow."

Mackiowiak remembers: "At the time we were writing 'See You On The Other Side', we had been living in Poughkeepsie, which is closer to New York City. Then we moved further upstate and started recording a lot. I think it was (different) just being away from the chaos that we had been living in in the city - all the craziness and going out all the time...we were living full-on with our foot on the gas pedal. Taking it off a little was good, and those first couple of songs - ‘Opus 40’ and ‘ Hudson Line’ - were about The Catskills themselves, about being here, and that set the stage almost for the whole album. I suppose we were trying to capture the feeling here... It’s hard to describe the vibe of The Catskills and The Hudson Valley, it’s kinda got this sleepy, foggy, late-night feeling all the time! ... Even for 'Yerself Is Steam' and 'Boces', a lot of the songs started out almost like folk songs and then we'd orchestrate everything by adding the fuzz guitars and freakouts and stuff like that. With '...Other Side', we wanted to use different things like mellotrons and horns, and when you hear the second disc of the rough demos for what would become became 'Deserter’s Songs', some of them sound very similar in style to that. But I think after that - when we went in with Dave, we said we wanted to do more lush arrangements with more strings - it changed direction and we pulled out a lot of the guitars and substituted a lot of instruments in. So we basically worked the same way as before in a way, but instead of writing a song and then orchestrating it with fuzz guitars, now we were orchestrating it with strings, french horns and oboes."

During the recording, the band was offered a deal with the new V2 label out of the UK. Donahue recalls: "There was never any huge ceremony, they just began filtering money to us'. 'Cause I don't think they had a lot of confidence that if they sent us a large cheque they'd ever see us again. They knew our history. So they would give us a little bit here and there, and say 'See what you boys can do with this...' "

The sessions were produced by Jonathan Donahue and Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road Studios, NRS Studios, and Six Hours Studios and featured Jonathan Donahue on vocals, acoustic guitar, and chamberlin strings; Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak on guitar reels, vocals on #6, and woodwinds; Jimy Chambers on clavinet, harpsichord, and drums; Dave Fridmann on piano, bass, mellotron, and backing vocals; Suzanne Thorpe on flutes; Adam Snyder on B3, Mellotron, and wurlitzer; with Levon Helm playing drums on "Opus 40"; Garth Hudson adding tenor & alto sax on "Hudson Line"; Amy Helm & Marie Spinosa providing female vox and whistling; Mary Gavazzi Fridmann as female soprano; Jeff Mercel on drums; Joel Eckhouse on bowed saw; Rachel Handman on violins; Matt Jordan on flugelhorns; Jim Burgess on trombones; Aaron Hurwitz on piano; Scott Petito on upright electric bass; and Garrett Uhlenbrock on slide guitar.