Mercury Rev: May 1, 2010 Truck America Festival – Flac and MP3 Downloads

[photo by nyctaper]

Twenty years ago, Jonathan Donohue was a member of both The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev. Although his tenure with the Lips lasted just two albums, echoes of the humanistic psychedelic indie folk-rock that both bands helped create still reside in Donohue’s songs. And while both bands reached their critical and artistic peaks in the late 90’s, the Lips with The Soft Bulletin and Mercury Rev with Deserter’s Songs, in recent years their parallel paths have diverged. The Flaming Lips of recent vintage concentrate more on the theatrical and marginally bombastic elements of their music, and seem to be content to deliver the same prop-heavy performances year after year. Donohue has maintained a lower profile and has delivered a series of excellent albums, the most recent of which, Snowflake Midnight, contains what is arguably his most heartfelt lyrical work. On Saturday night at the Truck America Festival, Mercury Rev headlined the main stage with a new wrinkle — a string section conducted by Joe Bennett. Additionally, Mercury Rev alums Justin and Jason Russo joined the band for this special show.  From the outset it was abundantly clear that this was no ordinary set, but rather was more a career-celebrating retrospective.  Jonathan acknowledged his long time fans, referenced the twenty year old self-released cassettes that he brought along to the festival, and delivered a set that included a song from those old cassettes (“Car Wash Hair”), a moving Nico cover (the Jackson Browne penned “These Days”), and indeed one of his Flaming Lips contributions (“There You Are: Jesus Song No. 7”). The string section did not just work well, it was almost as if each song demanded the contributions of these outstanding musicians and the seamless scoring of Joe Bennett. Of particular note, the guitar and clarinet work of Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak was sublime and superb. At the close of the set, “Isn’t It A Pity” was such a strong emotional number that although the stage was set to close for the night, Mercury Rev was called back for an encore. It was the only encore we saw all weekend.

I recorded this set in the same location and with the same rig as The Joy Formidable set from the previous night. However, the mix for this set was quite excellent, and as a result the sound quality of this recording is outstanding. Enjoy!

Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)

Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].

Mercury Rev
2010-05-01
Truck America Festival
Big Indian, NY USA

Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix

Soundboard + Neumann KM-150s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 2x 24bit 48kHz wav files > Soundforge (level adjustments, mixdown, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > Flac Frontend (level 7, align sector boundaries) > flac

Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2010-05-05

Setlist:
[Total Time 1:02:35]
01 Endlessly
02 [banter]
03 First-Time Mother’s Joy (Flying)
04 Car Wash Hair
05 Blue Clouds (Daniel Johnston)
06 Tonight It Shows
07 Runaway Raindrop
08 [banter]
09 Opus 40
10 There You Are: Jesus Song No. 7
11 Holes
12 These Days (Jackson Browne)
13 Isn’t It A Pity
14 [encore break]
15 Goddess On A Hiway

If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Mercury Rev, visit their website, and purchase their official releases from the store at the Mercury Rev website [here].