For Rev heads only?
The festive season and nearing the end of contracts are very good reasons for bands to be releasing compilations or curating mix collections and the past few months have been busy ones for Mercury Rev and potentially expensive for their fans.
With their 'Essential' compilation providing an overview of the band's last decade and a half, their addition to the ever-popular 'Back To Mine' highlights some influences and sound-alike of the bands output. It's always difficult to determine who these albums are aimed at. Perhaps there are a bunch of collectors who have all of the 'Back To Mine' series, much in the way the 'Fabric' releases encourage collector activity. Perhaps hardcore fans of the band are the targets as they ensure they have every release with the band's name on it. Who knows, on one level, the music is really good but if you like this sort of sound, and there is a theme running through the album, then it's likely you will have the majority of stuff on here already.
Highlights vary but notable standouts include Galaxie 500s 'When Will You Come Home' with its ragged guitar lines meshing well with the music combining a Mercury Rev feel to it, whilst being largely reminiscent of Joy Divisions 'Atmosphere.'
Mercury Rev's own inclusion falls in the middle of a brilliant run of artists such as Nico, Spacemen 3 and Suicide and their instrumental spacial 'Cecilia's Lunar Expose' comes across as nothing more than a novelty and falters in comparison. Particularly being followed by Spacemen 3's 'Big City', which sounds as glorious and blissed-out as it did way back when. Tracks like this should provide the inspiration to check out this album if you haven't got an awareness of these bands. In fact, you'd be advised to not buy this record but instead purchase some Spacemen 3 and Suicide records instead.
After this, the pace of the album takes a downturn and starts to glide slowly to the end, and it's not a bad replica of some of the sounds and images that Mercury Rev conjure up. Ever since 'Deserter's Songs' changed the public viewpoint of the band there has been a good living made by the band out of being epic and grand and this collection fits in neatly with that sound.
As a curiosity it may be of interest but some of the individual artists would be better being closely examined in more detail. The score reflects the overall songs available but if the mark out of thirteen was to signify the relevance of the existence of this record, it would be considerably lower.