Mercury Rev have announced a new album, Born Horses, which will be out September 6 via Bella Union. It’s their first album of new, original material since 2015’s The Light in You, though they did release a Bobbie Gentry tribute in 2019.
Says frontman Jonathan Donahue: “Since our beginning in the mid 80’s with David Baker through the recording of Born Horses with new permanent members, Woodstock native (pianist) Jesse Chandler and Austrian born (keyboardist) Marion Genser, we’ve celebrated this unspoken trust in the ‘statue already inside the marble’. We didn’t make Born Horses by throwing clay on top of clay; we allowed Time to reveal what was always there.”
The band cite minimalist artist Tony Conrad (LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate w/ John Cale) and beat poet Robert Creeley as influences on the album, which you can hear on the spectral first single, “Patterns.” Says Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak. “When we gaze up at the stars in the sky at night, the flickering lights seem random. If we could zoom out and see all of the galaxies revolving around each other, we would see the order in it. There are only Patterns on top of Patterns…” Watch the video below.
Born Horses
1. Mood Swings
2. Ancient Love
3. Your Hammer, My Heart
4. Patterns
5.A Bird Of No Address
6. Born Horses
7. Everything I Thought I Had Lost
8. There’s Always Been A Bird In Me