Mercury Rev Boces Remastered Vinyl

Mercury Rev is one of the US’s finest and most well-respected groups. Formed in Buffalo, New York in 1989, they are always experimenting and continually reinventing themselves. The Guardian called them “a rarity in indie rock: a band who have continually evolved their sound, pushing at the boundaries of what rock music actually means…borrowing from jazz, funk, doo-wop, techno, folk and more along the way.”We are happy to announce a remastered reissue of their 1993 second album Boces, set for release on LP + CD on November 13th.The lineup for this record included David Baker, Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper, Suzanne Thorpe, Dave Fridmann and Jimy Chambers. This was their last release with David Baker. After his departure, the band turned down the experimentation and leaned into the more melodic side of their music, which was fully realized on their 1998 breakthrough album Deserters Songs.The word “chaotic” often comes up when describing the band’s early releases. In a 25th anniversary celebration of Boces, The Quietus wrote that it is “to put it mildly, a quite remarkable record, a circus of colour & light and joy & sorrow, where all musical life is to be found. It sounded like nothing else on its release 25 years ago and still occupies a unique niche today, based on improvisation, the love of sound and an ego-free recording process that gave all six band members free reign to compose and contribute on an apparently equal footing.”Boces is such an important record in their discography, a grand and epic part of their story. The songs on the album came from the whole band. Everyone contributed and the recording process really allowed everyone’s freak flags to fly – partly thanks to their first ever major label recording budget. The opening 10-minute epic track “Meth of a Rockette’s Kick” really lets you know that this album will be like nothing you have ever heard before. It was an impressive effort – Entertainment Weekly wrote that “they put the risk back in rock” – which is what makes this album so great. They made exactly the record that they all wanted to make – nothing was stopping them, and they had the time and money to go all out.The sheer intensity of the album nearly tore the band apart, but from its chaos came a rebirth, proving that even out of absolute sonic destruction, a new creative path can emerge.These musical shapeshifters have released 10 full-length albums - their most recent, Born Horses, came out in 2024.