Mercury Rev to release two new albums in September

After a few years of relative inactivity (a best-of collection here, a soundtrack there), New York space-rockers Mercury Rev recently announced that the band will deliver not one, but two full-length albums this Sept. 30, via Yep Roc. The best part of this news? The second album is free!

The trio (Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper, and Jeff Mercel) emerged from a few months in the studio with songs aplenty, which Yep Roc reports "mark a significant conceptual shift for the band." Former 'Revver Dave Fridmann—also known as "the fifth Flaming Lip," thanks to his Grammy-winning knob-twiddling for the zany Oklahomans—co-produced, along with the band themselves, both the nine-song Snowflake Midnight and all-instrumental (and all-free!) companion Strange Attractor.

Although it might be tempting to accuse them of "pulling a Radiohead," the innovative group began exploring alternative, Internet-based marketing with 2005's The Secret Migration, which was released as a successive series of iTunes-only EPs in the months leading up to the album's drop date.

Fire up a colortini and head to the official Mercury Rev site to read a mystifying description of what to expect from Snowflake Midnight (here's a taste: "shimmering, vibrating close-ups and vistas of Life driving itself onward, bursting with patterns") and to sign up for the Mercury Rev mailing list: the download instructions for Strange Attractor will be sent out to subscribers on the day Snowflake Midnight falls.

In addition to the My Bloody Valentine-curated ATP New York fest on Sept. 21, the band has a slew of UK and European shows lined up for the fall, with U.S. dates expected to be announced shortly.

Snowflake Midnight:
1. Snowflake in a Hot World
2. Butterfly’s Wings
3. Senses on Fire
4. People Are So Unpredictable (There’s No Bliss Like Home)
5. October Sunshine
6. Runaway Raindrop
7. Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower
8. Faraway for Cars
9. A Squirrel and I (Holding On...and Letting Go)

Strange Attractor:
1. Love Is Pure
2. Taken Up Into Clouds, Changed and Rained Down
3. Pure Joie de la Solitude
4. Persistence and the Apis Mellifera
5. Fable of a Silver Moon
6. Loop Lisse, Loop
7. In My Heart, a Strange Attractor
8. Incident on Abeel Street
9. Af Den Fader Kommer Den Sol
10. Because Because Because
11. Nocturne for Norwood

Related links:

MercuryRev.com

Mercury Rev on MySpace

YouTube: Mercury Rev live on Jools Holland

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