суббота, 13 августа 2016 г.

The Mercury Seed - Dust

Bitrate: 320K/s
Year: 2002
Time: 45:34
Size: 104,8 MB
Label: TMS Records
Styles: Rock/Classic Rock
Art: Front

Tracks Listing:
 1. Learning to Crawl - 3:56
 2. Come Undone - 3:49
 3. Last Trace - 5:44
 4. Waiting - 4:55
 5. Misery Loves Co. - 4:52
 6. Coming Down Again - 4:15
 7. Two Steps (From the Move) - 5:10
 8. Dust - 3:28
 9. Sky Is Falling - 4:36
10. Times of Trouble - 4:44

Musicians:
Volker - Vocals;
John Jackson - Guitar;
Joe Nemchek - Guitar;
Gary D'Andrea - Bass;
John Chiechi - Drums.

Reading through the press kit of the Mercury Seed reveals name-dropping at its most excessive and shameless: Tom Petty, The Cure, Whiskeytown, Keith Richards, the Beach Boys, the Who, James Burton, Ricky Nelson, Kiss, Gram Parsons, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, the Byrds, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Dinosaur Jr., the Lemonheads, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Uncle Tupelo, the Replacements, the Jayhawks, the Georgia Satellites, Led Zeppelin, the Faces, Humble Pie, Wilco, Oasis, the Verve, Radiohead, Daniel Lanois, Aerosmith, Neil Diamond, Stevie Wonder, and the Stereophonics. I mean, goddamn. Hype-de-nom like this works against a band on so many different levels that the impulse to immediately toss this album away from my person was nearly irresistible. Unfortunately, I have a review to write, and that means pulling on the wellies to wade through this School of Rock bullshit, and hopefully coming out with a nugget of ingenuity to examine.  The Mercury Seed are a rock band from New York. Not a band from the "scene", but a band that happens to be from New York, although their spirit seems to have both feet dipped into the same Asbury Park well that Bruce Springsteen has been drinking from for over three decades. Each of the songs on their self-released album seems to be carefully constructed to evoke the Rock in a strictly blue jeans kind of way, ala the Black Crowes. In other words, this is music that accompanies drunken swaying by middle-aged folk at your local bar; the songs strive to evoke grainy sepia images of tires on a gravel road, close-ups of denim-clad asses, and triumphant profiles against a setting sun -- and this would all be fine if any of the ten tracks on Dust aspired to be more than an ideal, surface image of good 'ole American rock.
Song after song is weighed down in anthmetic cliches that annoy like a buzzing fly: catchy choruses abound ("Waiting", "Dust"), big soaring guitars appear at just the right moment ("Come Undone", "Coming Down Again"), yet it all feels hollow. The Mercury Seed's biggest flaw lies in their mediocrity, and I don't mean technical proficiency -- it's obvious these guys know how to play, and singer Volker Lemmer has one of those husky blue-collar voices that practically drips nicotine and Budweiser and hard-livin' angst. But there is nothing here that inspires any passion in me, not even intense dislike. There are no glaring annoyances in the song-writing, which is fairly solid, and not one instrument jumps out of the stereo to clobber me upside the head with its ineptness. No, every little piano twitter and harmonica squeal seems to be perfectly placed -- and that is the problem. I feel like I am listening to the paint-by-numbers version of a rock record, where every color has its specific place to form an equally perfect, uniform picture. Any one of these songs could be played on a WB television show to aurally illustrate some quintessential moment of melodramatic teenage angst.  The only songs that truly strain to elevate themselves from being on a soundtrack about bar bands are the final two tracks, "The Sky Is Falling" and "Time of Trouble," and you can thank guitarists Darren Salmieri and John Jackson for that. There at least seems to be a glimmer of rough ambition in these songs, courtesy of the wah-wah pedal. The band as a whole sounds loose, sweatier, more passionate -- there are times when it seems Lemmer is almost out of breath, his singing less affected, offering the immediacy that could have carried the majority of these songs over that line dividing the passable from the truly engaging. Apparently, this band is a rouser live, but all I have is this record, and it lacks the power to drag my ass out to a club to see them. What they need is less dust, more dirt -- I want fire and oil to spark these songs up and beyond mere background music. Give me more mercury in that seed. Then maybe we'll talk. (Oh, and maybe tone down the press kit, too? Trust me.)

Dust

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