4/02/2018

Mercury Rev Celebrate 'Deserter's Songs' 20th Anniversary + U.S. Tour Dates Announced

MERCURY REV CELEBRATE DESERTER'S SONGS 20TH ANNIVERSARY
BAND TO PLAY AT DESERT DAZE OCTOBER 12-14
OCTOBER TOUR DATES IN THE U.S. ANNOUNCED

 

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their classic album Deserter's SongsMercury Rev announce an October run of dates in the US. The tour kicks off with a slot at the Desert Daze Festival October 12-14

Following that the band have confirmed the following shows:
10/16 - The Chapel - San Francisco, CA
10/18 - Mississippi Studios - Portland, OR
10/19 - Tractor Tavern - Seattle, WA
10/26 - Music Hall of Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY

Mercury Rev will be touring Europe this spring where they are set to play intimate and acoustic shows with a particular focus on towns in Ireland and Scotland in which they've rarely performed. For the tour Mercury Rev will perform in the fragile "whisper and strum" that they were originally written. All dates are listed below.
Deserter's Songs was released to huge worldwide acclaim in 1998. The LP merged jazz, folk and 60s rock with Disney soundtrack fantasia and heralded Mercury Rev's rebirth as purveyors of a cosmic brand of the popular American songbook. Rolling Stone's Album Guide gives it 4 stars and Entertainment Weekly called it, "the art-rock album of the year" (A-). Pitchfork have noted, "The album's considerable critical success practically spawned a sub-genre of its own, with subsequent releases by the Flaming Lips, the Delgados,and Grandaddy all hewing to a similar balance of lyrical intimacy and orchestral expanse..." It was named album of the year by NME, MOJO and many other publications.

Of Deserter's Songs Jonathan Donahue notes: "By the time we began to surface following the destruction of the mid 90's there was no longer anyone of the band 'in the band'. It felt as though Grasshopper and I were just these two see-through phantoms banging around at night in my attic, bumping into a melody here and there, strumming on the last of my guitars not in hock, pressing pray and record on the old 8 Track reel to reel. We had no management, no label, no money and to be completely honest, no one clamoring for a new Rev album anywhere in the world. In fact, on the 2" tapes during the late recordings Dave Fridmann didn't write Mercury Rev and instead he used the name Harmony Rockets, a recent experimental side project of ours. The way we saw it, Deserter's wasn't going to be our next album... it was going to be our last. And likely only released on cassette to our friends... In fact, the only copy i've kept of Deserter's Songs from that time is on cassette. If anything, these upcoming live shows are by far the closest in spirit and nature to the original writing of that time. Near silent, apprehensive, fragile to the point of 'touch it and it turns to dust'. So full of self-doubt. The melancholy many hear on the album went in to album from the start, maybe long before it. Like from a mother to her unborn child, sadness and bewilderment just poured out us and into the album like an open cup."

  

Mercury Rev 2018 Tour Dates
4/12 - Gijon Sound Festival - Gijon, Spain
4/14 - C-Mine Little Waves Festival - Genk, Belgium
4/16 - Wesley Centenary Church - Bangor, UK (Sold Out)
4/17 - Wesley Centenary Church - Bangor, UK (Sold Out)
4/18 - Dolans Warehouse - Limerick, Ireland (Sold Out)
4/19 - Theatre Royal Waterford - Waterford, Ireland
4/20 - Live at St. Lukes - Cork, Ireland (Sold Out)
4/21 - Roisin Dubh - Galway, Ireland (Sold Out)
4/22 - Whelans - Dublin, Ireland (Sold Out)
4/24 - The Tolbooth - Stirling, UK (Sold Out)
4/25 - The Caves - Edinburgh, UK (Sold Out)
4/26 - Tunnels - Aberdeen, UK
4/27 - CCA - Glasgow, UK (Sold Out)
4/29 - Hotel Cecil - Copenhagen, Denmark (Sold Out)
4/30 - Hotel Cecil - Copenhagen, Denmark (Sold Out)
5/1 - Fasching - Stockholm, Sweden
5/2 - John Dee - Oslo, Norway (Sold Out)
10/12-14 - Desert Daze Festival - Lake Perris, CA
10/16 - The Chapel - San Francisco, CA
10/18 - Mississippi Studios - Portland, OR
10/19 - Tractor Tavern - Seattle, WA
10/26 - Music Hall of Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY

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