[BestEverAlbums]

Today's album of the day

Yerself Is Steam by Mercury Rev (View album | Buy this album)

Year: 1991.
Country:
Mercury Rev discography rank: 2 (out of 20 listed on BEA)
1991 rank: 18
1990s rank: 180
Overall rank: 958
Average rating: 78/100 (from 310 votes).



Tracks:
1. Chasing A Bee
2. Syringe Mouth
3. Coney Island Cyclone
4. Blue And Black
5. Sweet Oddysee Of A Cancer Cell T' Center Of Yer Heart
6. Frittering
7. Continuous Trucks And Thunder Under A Mother's Smile
8. Very Sleepy Rivers

indicates a top-rated track.

Top voted comments:

"yeah, he posts on his chart as well as the album page... and they are all basically a regurgitation of what Scaruffi wrote, bordering on plagiarism. This is what Scaruffi had to say about this album:
"Yerself Is Steam (1991) was a psychedelic extravaganza that spanned three decades and three continents. Emotionally, it ran the gamut from Red Krayola's anarchic freak-outs to contemplative/meditative ecstases in the vein of new-age music. Technically, it blended and alternated pop melody, ambient droning, mind-boggling distortion, oneiric folk, martial tempos, pastoral passages, infernal noise and lyrical lullabies. Far from being merely a nostalgic tribute to an age, Mercury Rev's operation started with the hippie vision of nirvana on the other side of a swirling and chaotic music, but tempered the optimism of that program with an awareness of the human condition, and poisoned it with fits of neurosis and decadent atmospheres."

see any similarities? all of his posts are like this. hairy, you should just post a link to Scaruffi's page."
- The Gollux (Rating: 90/100)
________________________________________________________

"Beware! Anyone familiar with "Deserter's Songs", this is NOT chamber pop, but beautiful noise pop. If you like noise, this is the place to go. Blew my mind first time I heard it!"
- CellarDoor (Rating: 100/100)
________________________________________________________

About album of the day: The BestEverAlbums.com album of the day is the album appearing most prominently in member charts in the previous 24 hours. If an album, or artist, has previously been selected within a x day period, the next highest album is picked instead (and so on) to ensure a bit of variety. A full history of album of the day can be viewed here.
_________________
Bluesky · Facebook · Spotify · X

[DommeDamian]

This description is a combination of Piero Scaruffi's wonderful review, After Hours' opinion and my thoughts on the different tunes on the album Yerself Is Steam: On first listen, the record’s sound is chaotic and swirling, obviously signifying Mercury Rev’s cathartic function, and their aim to achieve an acid-influenced nirvana, just like the first San Franciscan hippies. But every song hides terrible neurosis, which amplifies the most electric moments of Neil Young, and gives rise to a sick and decadent atmosphere, different than that of the optimistic and carefree '60s. Red Krayola was a caterpillar, these guys are the new age butterfly; uncoordinated and unbalanced, like Red Krayola, but at the same time containing a contemplative and meditative sound, like new age music.

The band’s method of hypnosis is well exemplified by the song Frittering, in which one of the guitars "sings" the spongy melody while the other is immersed in a sea of distortion. Everything goes on for eight minutes over a hypnotic cadence. Chasing A Bee runs for seven minutes and is the quintessence of '"dreampop" music: folk guitar chords are underpinned by an underworld of eccentric sounds, all accompanied by a fairytale-like lullaby singer. If you ask me, it is psychedelic rock for the generation of golden era Shoegaze, and music for the hottest day of the summer; it's like levitating through the summer city, 30 degrees celsius, eating honey buckets with a tiny headache [you know the feeling that when think of an album or particular song, a specific taste hits your mental tastebuds? Well with this supreme masterpiece, it is honey]. It's absolutely brilliant.

Slowly, the guitar riffs become more distorted and loud, while the pace becomes more and more martial. Meanwhile, the noise generated by Thorpe’s pastoral flute playing hovers calmly over the piece. The song is gradually submerged in a maelstrom of hellish noise. Blue and Black is a piece of Dadaist theater in the most solemn tradition of David Thomas: a soft-toned shamanic blather, it is as insane as it is poetic, floating on a gentle rhythmic carpet on which stands massive chords for both piano and orchestra.

Percussion is often the protagonist; the harmonies are always accompanied by eccentric rhythms. Syringe Mouth is influenced by the demented saraband of Red Krayola (and definitely like the biggest noise rock banger ever), with a carousel of guitars and distorted vocals set to a crazy martial rhythm. In Sweet Odyssee of a Cancer Cell, exhaled over a charging beat are almost Indian psalms, and before long the song is screwed into a dizzying Sufis dance.

There is much psychological content in not just the vocals (on the edge of bliss and a psychotic break) but also the wild and vigorous instrumentation, most prominently the wildly colorful, delirious, ruptured, violent, nightmarish and sometimes panoramic vistas of the evocative and monstrous guitar playing, which runs the gamut of states of mind from the very debased and psychotic to epic nirvana or the transcendental ("nirvana" the state, not the band). Combined with the surreal, fractured, neurosis/psychosis in the vocals, this has a sickly tension and (in climaxes) an otherworldly wide-eyed visionary explosion to it, of both a psychedelic "happiness" and as if delving into a precarious, unstable mind akin to that of a serial killer falling apart, his reality bursting at the seams.

The disc culminates with Very Sleepy Rivers, twelve minutes of slow clouds of chords and ethereal singing, which is broken by an inhumane fear. If you noclip into the Backrooms, make sure to have this record in yer bag. It will add flavor, purpose, and even more intensity to the levels.
_________________
My Top 100 :
www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=4...amp;page=1

My music:
- www.hyperfollow.com/dommedamian