Demob Happy

10 year milesone for classic psych rock album

9/10

Mercury Rev’s 1998 album was undoubtably a turning point, a massively influencial re-envisioning of the pop-rock form that inspired countless imitators. Marginally pre-dating The Flaming Lips’ equally stunning The Soft Bulletin by about one year, in my view Deserter’s Songs began a protracted period of American dominance in indie rock (Radiohead excepting) that remains a decade later. Probably the album for which the term psych rock was invented, Deserter’s Songs eschewed the orthodoxy of the period for lush orchestrations, faux-naive vocals, lullaby-like melodies, and kaleidoscopic harmonies. Unlike their British counterparts, their music favoured awe-struck wonder and whistful romanticism over gloom-laden paranoia or the back-to-basics approach of the (slightly later) post-punk revival. Psychedelic without being prog, but too weirdly off-beat to be mainstream, Deserter’s Songs had a then unfashionably wide-screen grandeur that enabled the alt-rock scene to once again embrace a broader sonic pallet. Replete with horns, piano, violins and bowed saw the album has influenced countless acts from The Earlies and Animal Collective to Midlake and Grandaddy. A magestic, wide-eyed classic.