The Orbit of Eternal Grace is outer space music for your inner spaces, full of alien sounds yet strangely familiar, like the music you heard when you were too young to know what music was.
Opener "Silver Balloons" mourns a love lost with proto-techno bleeps and squealing, phoned-in guitar. Yet there's a sadness in the melody, a mood developed more completely on "The Ballad of the One-Eyed Anglefish," a pretty, folksy drone that proves you don't have to like Jethro Tull to enjoy a nice flute every once and a while.
"Nickel in a Lemon" is another soothing, rainy-day lament, the kind of song that makes calling in sick and drinking hot tea all afternoon sound like the only plausible option. Yet to get there you have to go through "O-Ring (Baby Talk)," a punky, rattling missive built on a sinister mood and an alien groove. And not long after the exquisite "September's Fool" Grasshopper drops you into "Univac Bug Track," a techno number seemingly made without the aid of any technology developed since 1984.
But these moments of disorientation are somehow just as important -- and rewarding. They show the Mercury Revsters, in whatever guise, are still working on the fringe of reason and well beyond the dictates of fashion, eager to redefine what they're allowed to do. Among rock bands, perhaps only the Super Furry Animals and Primal Scream are so dedicated to the cause. Climb aboard.
If you like Grasshopper and the Golden Crickets, check out:
Mercury Rev Yerself Is Steam
Mercury Rev See You on the Other Side
Super Furry Animals Radiator
The Boo Radleys Giant Steps
-- jf
