In 1998, the album “Deserter’s Storm” by Mercury Rav suddenly exploded on the world, a strange alternative American indie-rock group with heavy tendencies towards psychedelia, was chosen as the album of the year by the NME and made them pop idols around the world. In the Tel Aviv indie circles of those years, they flew over them like a religious epiphany, and their every landing in the city caused waves of excitement. The good news for those who shudder is that this November it will happen again.
Mercury Rab They are mainly Jonathan Donahue and Grasshofer, the first is the singer and the guitarist, the second plays anything that makes a sound, they are already 55 years old and have seen all the ups and downs that musical success has to offer, and they will come to Tel Aviv for the fifth time – and this time with a special acoustic performance as part of the Piano Festival . It used to be called unplugged.
The show itself sounds like a real and unusual candy for all music lovers: An acoustic and intimate evening in which the Mercury-Many will play and tell about the band’s songs throughout their almost 40 years of acquaintance, about their heartbreaking masterpiece album from 1998, its great success, the storm that surrounded it, the strange events that accompanied its departure and almost led to the band’s dissolution and the unexpected fusion of the rifts . The songs will be performed in special acoustic arrangements, which Donahue calls: ‘whisper and strum’ And says that this is how he wrote the songs from the beginning, before they became the versions we know today.
Mercury Rav are known for their unique and boundary-breaking sound, between alternative rock and psychedelic, with the charismatic Jonathan Donahue’s voice hovering over the melody (a style quite a few indie bands have adopted over the years, but Mercury Rav were its pioneers). They have signed ten albums. The last of them came out in 2019, Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited, And it is all a breathtaking tribute of covers to the singer Bobbi Gentry who in the sixties became the first singer in the United States to produce her songs and own the rights to them. In this album Mercury collaborated with the amazing voices of Susan Sundfor, Beth Orton, Hope Sandoval and Norah Jones in a celebration of the best female vocalists in the world.
“We want to invite you to our intimate acoustic performance,” wrote Donahue and Grasshofer, who are known for their love of performing in Israel and Israel in general, in a message to the Israeli audience, “accompanied by a piano and a mellotron with stories and songs behind the music we recorded – and the music we adored – for almost 40 years together. This will be our fifth adventure In Israel and we are really looking forward to performing with many of these songs in the ‘Light Night/Whispering Way’ format in which they were born, fragile, naked and wide-eyed just like us.”
>> Mercury Rav, Wednesday 2.11, Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Tickets (NIS 239) on the Zappa website