Mercury rev yerself is steam zip

The music matches the vocals too, everything fits together perfectly. Of course, those familiar with the more recent music by the band, know they are usually very mellow, but still very different and still full of emotion. In this debut album, the emotion is there, but it is not typical, as nothing about this is typical.

Lyrics are strange, vocals are off kilter, instrumental passages are not typical, and it all fits together amazingly well. The album name, "Yerself is Steam" is a lyric that keeps popping up on the first track and is a misinterpretation of the phrase "Your Self-Esteem". It is a study of contrasts throughout it's seven minute runtime.

Loud and chaotic, soft and dissonant. Even here during a quiet moment, there is that sense of unease. At the 2 minute mark, drums kick in and so do the psychedelic sounds of guitars, building a wall of sound, the vocals becoming locked into the entire mix, not standing out, but not completely buried within either.

It becomes more dissonant as it continues, then suddenly the wall is dropped and it's just acoustic guitar, but then it builds back again quickly. Guitar forms a melody just barely over the background noise. One little label, Jungle in the U. Which they still own. Wrapping up the record meant completing the last few tracks. Having just graduated from college, Chambers was a free agent when a phone call from Donahue brought him to Fredonia for a final set of sessions.

We rehearsed the songs maybe once. What you hear is me not knowing what to do and being really uncomfortable. At least part of the lurching dynamics so audible on the record had been baked into the mix from the start.

A big part of the record was actually mixed into it by default. Jungle released the record in Europe, and then the six essentially returned to their daily routines—Donahue and Fridmann reprised their respective roles in the Flaming Lips; Mackowiak and Chambers joined their friend Dean Wareham in an early version of Luna; Baker moved to Baltimore; and Thorpe relocated to New York City.

The essential challenge was that Mercury Rev had largely been, until now, a recording project only. Jungle had successfully pitched the finished product to media in the U. When the feature writers at Melody Maker decided it was time to pay a visit to the States to check the band out in person, a minor wave of panic set in, as the members scrambled to put on a live show for the first time. Having been sent to the U. But then it would be written about everywhere and the band would get so much press.

The story took on a life of its own. Yerself Is Steam Streaming. Digital File. Expand all 13 issues. Page 1 My copy is on transparent blue vinyl, though it also came out on splattered pink and maybe other colors. So I'd recommend just getting one of the black vinyl versions, or better yet the U. CD with the bonus track "Car Wash Hair.

The album title a pun on "your self-esteem" comes from a line in "Chasing A Bee" , whose hallucinatory video shows the band members' roots as film majors, as well as a lot of similarities to Dinosaur Jr.

As far as opening songs on debut albums go, this is one of the all-time best. There's an alt. Bardo Pond probably got their whole career from it. As I mentioned, it lacks one of the band's most beloved tunes, "Car Wash Hair," which was tacked onto the U. CD issue. This is a terrific mental image. I've had this LP cover framed and hanging on my wall or sitting on a shelf since I bought it in Whenever I want to replace it with another cover , something stops me Something about the woman-in-the-midst-of-chaos vibe it gives off, or the great typography.

One may think, "What the hell is Yerself Is Steam? And like steam, once it's gone, it will vanish forever. The album itself is a beautiful cacophony of noise. We have two tracks which begin as light acoustic riffs and progress to epic proportions Chasing A Bee, Frittering. Syringe Mouth and Blue and Black hook us with maniacal, demented lyrics. The former complemented with brutal guitar feedback while the latter with a lighter meandering piano.

Donahue left The Flaming Lips right as they had achieved major label success, but he needed to get out of Wayne Coyne's shadow. He proved with Yerself Is Steam that he had the vision to lead his own band. Yerself Is Steam was another amazing album released in You can tell from the packaging that listening to the cd will be a trip.

I have the Mint Film UK version and on the spine it says "stereo fucked".