Frog Eyes - Carey's Cold Spring (2013) [FLAC]

Genre: Pop/Rock Style: Indie Rock Source: WEB Codec: FLAC Bit Rate: ~ 900 kbps Bit Depth: 16 Sampling Rate: 44,100 Hz

01 The Road is Long 02 The Country Child 03 Your Holiday Treat 04 Don't Give Up Your Dreams 05 Needle in the Sun 06 Noni's Got a Taste for the Bright Red Air Jordans 07 A Duration of Starts and Lines That Form Code 08 Seven Daughters 09 Claxxon's Lament

Mercer sings, as he so often does, in symbols that are elemental and long lasting (of roses in sand, of rolling waves, of lightning) and pairs them with distinctly modern vignettes (his invocation of a teeming hospital parking lot swims immediately to mind). He addresses death, and the reaper, repeatedly, as if it were a person. On the Bandcamp page for this self-released album, Mercer writes: “I can’t be beholden to anyone but that ‘spirit force’ within me that demands a constant production of music. I’ve got to get the music out quicker, and being the owner of my music allows me to do this. Songs turn toxic within you if you leave them in there too long.” It’s as if Mercer’s is music striving to become nature, as unchained as any guttural, animalistic thing inside us, eloquent and articulate in its way, always relevant and universal in its aspect—music as a matter of survival. This is music that simply has to exist, simply must get out lest it stagnates, is overthought, turns against its writer. Music as Frankenstein’s monster, The Modern Prometheus. Mercer writes music the way a housecat hunts birds and insects: in fits and spurts of uncontainable instinct, despite a long line of domesticity.

Ultimately, Mercer has only done here what he seems always to strive to do, which is create an unflinching, uncompromising piece of art, and that’s enough to recover, a little bit, the notion of giving oneself wholly and unreservedly and without embarrassment to the experience of art. Carey Mercer’s music rises above the excess, the desensitization, and the cynicism of cool that keeps us from developing empathy with the writer, with our fellow audience members, with critics. Carey’s Cold Spring reinvests some portion of me in the notion that music has meaning, and utility, and can makes things better.