Mercury Rev is an American rock band formed in 1989 in Buffalo, New York,[5] with singer/guitarist Jonathan Donahue and guitarist/clarinetist/sound generator operator Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak as the only constant members.

[7] The line-up gradually coalesced around Donahue, Grasshopper, vocalist/keyboard player David Baker and flute/French horn player Suzanne Thorpe; subsequent additions were bass guitarist/in-house producer Dave Fridmann (a music production student at SUNY Fredonia, who began by recording the band and subsequently added enough bass guitar and sonic effect parts to make himself a full band member), and a late addition in the form of drummer Jimy Chambers (who joined towards the end of initial recording sessions to "effectively serve as the frame around Mercury Rev’s musical splatter.

Donahue worked as a gig promoter for other bands' concerts in Buffalo, which brought him into contact with The Flaming Lips in 1989: he then toured with them as guitar technician before formally joining as lead guitarist in time to play on their 1990 album In a Priest Driven Ambulance.

Fridmann, meanwhile, had produced the band's early recordings as part of his university course-work, meaning that Mercury Rev could access and use the SUNY Fredonia studios in off-hours and at cheap rates.

[8] As they began to play live (and across a greater spread of venues and events), the band began to make a name for themselves as creators of powerfully experimental, often chaotic psychedelic music, with Pitchfork later recalling "in their formative years, Mercury Rev really did sound like a careening bus headed towards a fiery crash — one where half the people on board were frantically fighting each other for control of the wheel, and the other half were in the back obliviously singing nursery rhymes as the whole bucket of bolts went up in flames... [It was] less a melding of disparate sounds than a battle royale of oppositional ideologies: order and anarchy, ecstasy and terror, purity and perversion.

At the Lollopalooza gig at Greenwood Village, Colorado on 26 June, the band were forced off the stage for being too loud and "out of control" following an objection by the Mayor of Denver.

[4] The band's first post-Baker album, See You on the Other Side (1995) contained a variety of styles, including a sprawling psychedelic opening track and noise rock numbers like "Young Man's Stride" (for which a music video was released), but also more melodic songs, such as "Sudden Ray of Hope".

See You on the Other Side failed to sell well, a situation which helped to trigger a destructive period for the band during which they fell into debt, came into conflict with their record label, lost their manager and lawyers, and parted company with drummer Jimy Chambers.

[20][21] While Grasshopper retreated to a Jesuit guest house in upstate New York, Donahue began to listen to records of children's music and to write simple melodies on piano (in contrast to the band's former psychedelic/electric compositional approach.

The personnel for the album was a loose core of Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper and Suzanne Thorpe, joined by Dave Fridmann and by former drummer Jimy Chambers, and augmented by local musicians (including two former members of The Band - Garth Hudson and Levon Helm).

At the secondary recording and mixing stage, Donahue, Grasshopper and Fridmann opted not to use their previous method of distorted guitar and electronic overdubs and instead began to use strings, horns and woodwinds, resulting in more of a chamber pop sound while retaining a psychedelic tinge.

[20][24] The 1998 release of the resulting Deserter's Songs album met with acclaim, and made Mercury Rev unexpected pop stars.

Both Suzanne Thorpe and Jimy Chambers left Mercury Rev following the recording of the album, with the tours promoting Deserter's Songs featuring the return of the Russo brothers and Adam Snyder (although all three would depart the live band during 2000).

[14] Although Thorpe would return as a guest player for All is Dream,[14] she would subsequently concentrate on academic research and emerge as a Deep Listening instructor, university lecturer and electro-acoustic improviser, as well as becoming part of "pirate-punk" band The Wounded Knees.

[31] Thorpe has also returned for occasional band revisitations of the Harmony Rockets project, including one at the 2009 All Tomorrow's Parties festival in England.

[34] David Bowie producer Tony Visconti arranged strings and provided Mellotron parts for the album, which also featured contributions from Jason and Justin Russo.

At this point the band were officially a duo of Donahue and Grasshopper, with Molina, Miranda and Chandler still regularly contributing but as part of a set of support musicians.

This was a reworking of Bobbie Gentry’s 1968 album The Delta Sweete,[37] featuring instrumentation by Mercury Rev and a different female guest singer on each song.