American Music Club
Mercury

THE REVIEW

'Mercury', released in 1993 and produced by Mitchell Froom, is undoubtedly the most important album in the songwriting of Mark Eitzel, who succeeds in shaping a profound and sincere project that unfolds in an alternation of folk-pop and claustrophobic pieces. These pieces aim to finally bring to light that search for space already sketched in previous efforts.

Eitzel's voice melancholically accompanies us through all fourteen tracks, alternating enigmatic silences with desperate pleas for understanding and love, along with electric hisses that close the circle around the element that dominates everything the most, namely, an emotionality that reaches disorienting and incredibly engaging levels. Thus, we move from the fabulous initial intro of "Gratitude Walks" to more rock-oriented and faster tracks like "Challenger" and "Keep Me Around", which act as a glue to the presence of a killer chorus like that of "If I Had A Hammer".

Also noteworthy are the almost murky atmospheres of "What Godzilla Said To God When His Name Wasn't Found In The Book Of Life" and the tribal-oriental tones of "Dallas, Airports, Bodybags", and especially the dreamlike "Apology For An Accident" and "The Hopes and Dreams of Heaven's 10,000 Whores", which connect to the two final songs "More Hopes And Dreams" and "Will You Find Me?", full of psychedelic accents that mark the end of one of the most important albums of the nineties in a hybrid genre that had almost entirely lost its splendor in the previous decade.