Mercury Rev

Mercury Rev – Frittering

(1991 – included on the album “Yerself Is Steam”, Columbia, 1991)

The psychedelia revival, we all know it well. The turn of the decade between the '80s and '90s marked the peak of one of the most fortunate trends in rock music. Whether through the continuing work of its greatest exponents or the most fashionable currents, from shoegaze to slowcore, or new acts, from the most superficial to the most original, neo-psychedelia remains one of the underground's fertile fields to this day (and it's telling that even talking about "underground" now sounds terribly demodé).

And if one of the common denominators of this melting pot is the association, or the discrepancy, or perhaps even a kind of schizophrenia, between singable melody and acid noise, one of its cornerstones is Mercury Rev. The splendid trajectory of the New York band is embodied, in their early days, by a sprawling lineup, perhaps even a sort of small hippy commune well past its time: David Baker, Jon Donahue, Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak, Susanne Thorpe, Dave Fridmann, Jimy Chambers.

This band recorded, right around the start of the '90s, one of the cornerstones of worldwide neo-psychedelia, "Yerself Is Steam", their debut album, unmatched in bearing, insight, emotional range, and — last but not least — sound. The voluptuous, timeless hallucinogenic chant "Frittering" is its centerpiece. Artistically speaking, "Frittering" has less muscle and fewer adventurous experiments than other episodes on the record, from the chaotic fairy tale of "Chasing A Bee", to the surrealist tableau of "Blue And Black", to the dancing hurricane of "Sweet Oddysee", to the flayed-latex feel of "Very Sleepy Rivers". Truth be told, it's also missing Thorpe's glorious post-hippy flute. But, on par with — and perhaps even surpassing — these tracks, this song embodies the aesthetic perfection of the album, of the band's early years, and, if you like, of the entire movement it belongs to, friends-and-rivals Flaming Lips included.

"Frittering" is, through and through, a vision. Its wonderful strumming captivates instantly; the celestial tension that, even more suddenly, disguises itself as boiling distortion and organ is another gut-punch on a Pink Floyd-esque and Doors-esque scale. If psychedelia feeds on Indian stylistic tropes, here we get their own original idea of a mantra, dished out with utmost naturalness by Baker's unreal trance and his continuous, dazed "I've Seen You" repeated ad libitum.

This song is also a peak of dilation, not only in its ponderous tempo, driven by glorious syncopations that perhaps not even Neil Young's finest ballads can boast, but also in stretching the breath of a pop song almost to the scale of a symphonic monument, all without ever overdoing it. When the customary bridge arrives, the only change in key in this rosary of solemn vertigo, it's still just an excuse to let the distortion erupt, launching it into an exploration of stellar magma and ups and downs of parallel dimensions, in one of the most mind-blowing flows ever conceived.

And when the song comes back to itself, also dazed enough to sound slightly dissonant, Baker's voice is still there, chanting the same words again in the exact same register. The vision of the Rhine carrying away a piece of ice, symbol of a love now over, speaks of time and is sung in imitation of time itself: repeating, again and again, the formula, like an amulet, like an autistic stab of pain, like a martyrdom aimed at ecstasy, like a cosmic prayer. A taste of eternity.

I've seen you eat away

slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

I've seen you chisel away

slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

And you wonder why I leave so soon

How I get so high sink to the bottom of your room

I've seen you fritter away

Slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

I've seen you whittle away

Slow as a glacier makes its way down to the spine

And you wonder why I leave so soon

How I get so high sink to the bottom of your room

I wonder why I stay

Slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

I've seen you eat away

Slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

I wonder what to do

Slow as a glacier takes to move on through the world

And you wonder why I leave so soon

How I get so high sink to the bottom of your room

And you wonder why I leave so soon

How I get so high sink to the bottom of your room

I've seen you chisel away

Hammer in place always in time

I've seen you chisel away

Slow as a glacier makes its way down to the Rhine

And you wonder why I leave so soon

How I get so high sink to the bottom of your room

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05/03/2026