Artist: Frog Eyes
Album: Tears of the Valedictorian
Label: Kosher Records
Year: 2008
Reviewed By: Woodstock Slim
When this album cracks your head open on the first track you keep bleeding all the way to the end, round track five(the policy merchant) you start feeling a bit dizzy from all the blood loss and definitely feel as if you're being led straight into the arms of hell. Psychedelica for 2008, relentless, exhausting and like nothing you've ever heard. It is like having your leg cut off whilst you're having the best sex of your life. There is no album out there that could have prepared you for the power and wailing vocals of Mercer. He sings like an ape swinging from tree to tree occasionally wiping out and you can hear him crying.
Frog Eyes are an Indie rock band from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The quartet is led by singer/guitarist Carey Mercer and is known for their highly idiosyncratic songs, which pit Mercer's unhinged, melodic vocals against a swirling mass of guitar, keyboards, and drums. Drummer Melanie Campbell (also Mercer's wife) notably uses a 'found object' as part of her drums set, the so-called "dinger."
Prior to Frog Eyes, Mercer was in Blue Pine, who released one self-titled album and whose unreleased second album was later appended to the reissue of Frog Eyes' debut, The Bloody Hand. Mercer also has a solo project, Blackout Beach, and has released one album (Light Flows the Putrid Dawn) and one single under that name. Different versions of three Blackout Beach songs appear on Frog Eyes releases.
Frog Eyes performed with "Destroyer"(yes, and watch out for this band, we featured them on our radio show this sunday past, phoarwwh!) in live shows and on Dan Bejar's album Notorious Lightning & Other Works. This collaboration led to the formation of Swan Lake, a "songwriter's project" with Dan Bejar of Destroyer/The New Pornographers and Spencer Krug of Sunset Rubdown/Wolf Parade.
A little advice, read the lyrics before you listen to the music or you'll miss the whole damned point of Tears of the Valedictorian.
