"It's going back to an old neighbourhood, and none of the old familiar landmarks are there. They're all Starbucks now. I know I'm in the music business, I know I'm playing a show in Paris, but when the signs around are all the same, it takes a while to realise, 'I'm in the place I knew, but not in the place I once knew..."
Things have most certainly changed since Mercury Rev were last on the radar in a major way. Seven years, in fact, have passed since their last album, Snowflake Midnight, and that period hasn’t been punctuated by tours either. For frontman Jonathan Donahue, though, it hasn’t really felt like that.
“Living up in the Catskills, time passes differently,” he muses down the line from his home in upstate New York. “I’m sure it’s no different in rural parts of Ireland, too, when compared to the vortex of London or New York. For some people, seven years is an eternity. I can understand that, but I don’t relate to it.”
It’s not to say that the period didn’t see a huge amount happen in the lives of Jonathan and Grasshopper, his ever-present bandmate – quite the contrary.
“There were beautiful moments, intense moments, and catastrophic moments. Grasshopper became a father for the first time, so his life went to the moon and back. It’s still orbiting in a strange ellipse, and he’s finding it interesting every moment. I went through some crazy moments, relationship-wise. I’m certain that everyone goes through it, in various degrees, but for me it was going through the cosmic wash cycle.”
If the somewhat extra-terrestrial language seems odd, it’s actually strangely fitting, given that the main topic of conversation is The Light In You, the ethereal and other-wordly new album from the group. In some ways, the LP bears the hallmarks of Mercury Rev – daring, expansive and arresting – but in others, it stands alone. Not, mind, that everyone feels that way.
“I think the new album is completely different to anything we’ve done before,” Jonathan grins. “Yet the first thing out of people’s mouths is, ‘It’s so good to hear your sound again!’ I honestly don’t know anymore.”
Perhaps it’s the tumult and turbulence that serves as the backdrop that’s prompted feelings of familiarity from fans. It was from similarly troubled times that we were treated to Deserter’s Songs, the band’s 1998 meisterwerk. Some have been quick to compare and contrast; too quick for Jonathan, it would seem.
“There probably are some parallels,” he concedes, “but I’m still too close to the album to see them. The eye can’t see itself.”
One thing that’s instantly identifiable is a theme of loss and loneliness. While there are some deeper, more philosophical influences, there’s also a very literal one – and one that will break the heart of anyone who loves the aforementioned classic album.
“I lost my cottage to a flood,” Jonathan explains, “in one of those storms a few years ago. I truly believe that nothing focuses the mind like watching your belongings being swept downstream. We got out just in time, before the levee broke. The girlfriend and I watched as things literally flowed past, almost in slow-motion. There was something getting swept along, it looked like a long water snake. My girlfriend was staring and feeling bad for it, but I looked for a moment and realised: ‘That’s not a water snake. That’s ‘Holes’. And ‘Endlessly’.’ We were watching the master tapes of Deserter’s Songs unspool as they ran downstream.”
“That was the material side of a period of loss,” he continues. “There’s an emotional part, and the mental too; the emotional stuff would come later, in the loss of relationships, and the mental side is still processing these things.”
And while it remains an ongoing process, the album is a stunning document of isolation, injury and inspiration. A genuine journey, it tells a story from first track to last – a development, Jonathan says, that occurred unbeknownst to its two creators.
“The arc of the album revealed itself,” he admits. “I didn’t see it. There are songs in the first half that have an isolated loneliness – though not despair. It’s more a disconnect. And then, a light comes on, a flickering lantern. It’s within everyone, but you can’t control it yourself; it comes on of its own accord. Somewhere around Coming Up For Air, it shifts – it’s not from utter blackness to the centre of the sun, but there’s a shimmer on the water.”
If there’s an organic tale in the record, then it’s likely reflective of the lengthy gestation period.
“You plant seeds, like any artist. And no matter how many rain dances you perform, circling them in the dust at midnight, praying and wishing them from the soil, they shoot up in their own time. Had we dug these seeds up three years earlier, it wouldn’t have been developed. People ask ‘Why seven years?’ I didn’t want to wait that long, but I knew enough at this point in my life to have patience. Not every child will walk at nine months, or read at a year and a half.”