Mercury Rev - Frittering
"I've seen you fritter away. Slow as a glacier makes it way down to the Rhine."
Album: Yerself Is Steam [debut album]
Genre: Neo-Psychedelia, Shoegaze, Indie Rock,
Album Release: May 14th 1991
Length: 8.48
Producer: Mercury Rev
Vocalist: David Baker
Label: Jungle Records
Official Audio
Peel session 1991
Live in 2015
Charts, Streams & Sales
Spotify = 240,000 +
YouTube Music = 160,000 +
Pitchfork's Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time (2016): #16
Credits
Details
- The song is from Mercury Rev's debut album. The band was formed in New York during the late 80s while the members attended SUNY Buffalo.
- Guitarist Jonathan Donahue had previously played in The Flaming Lips.
- Bassist David Fridmann would go on to become a sought after producer in neo-psychedelia. He has produced for MGMT, Tame Impala, Sparklehorse and has done five albums for The Flaming Lips including The Soft Bulletin & Yoshimi.
- The album title Yerself is Steam was chosen because it sounds like 'your
self esteem'. Likely referring to what we think of as ourselves merely
being a series of chemical reactions.
- The song has two prominent lines that are repeated throughout. The first is 'slow as a glacier makes it way down to the Rhine' and the other 'I get so high I sink to the bottom of your room.' With the help of the music these two repeated lines create a swaying, back and forth motion bringing to mind the quality of steam swirling in the air. Meanwhile, the lyrical content equates the gradual erosion of a glacier to the ups and downs of getting high in a friends apartment. Two very different activities that are both nevertheless subject to chemical states of change. This serves as a reminder that we, as human beings, are still a part of nature and that everything is everything waiting to be formed and reformed. The glacier melts into water ("the Rhine") and eventually evaporates into condensation, or to quote the album title, steam. It is psychedelic music after all.
- The album tracks on the back cover have incorrect runtimes. For example, this song Frittering, has its runtime listed as 4.27 when it is in fact nearly twice the length at 8.48.
Artwork
