Barometer of change

The mountains have made their mark on Mercury Rev's new album, The Secret Migration. Singer Jonathan Donahue talks to Jim Carroll about his natural muse and embracing the circle of life.

the swans, recalls Mercury Rev singer Jonathan Donahue, seemed to be always there. Some nights, he'd take a break from recording the new album and walk outside to clear his head. "I'd be thinking 'man, this record will never come together'."

Then, Donahue would look over at the creek, where "the two swans who seemed to be always there were fluttering away on top of the ice". It began to dawn on Donahue that, just as it was for those swans, there would always be another day and another opportunity to finish that track.

Naturally the swans make it onto The Secret Migration, gliding comfortably along in the midst of a cast which appears, at times, to be on loan from Mother Nature. While you could place it quite comfortably alongside its two immediate predecessors in terms of its ambition, scope and trailblazing musical depth, the new Mercury Rev album has a different thematic swing to its pendulum.

If 1998's Deserter's Songs was a weather-beaten ode to the America of highways, prairies and wide open spaces and 2001's All Is Dream existed in the shadows between the real and the ethereal, The Secret Migration is about the optimism that comes with change of both the seasonal and human variety.

Donahue's lyrics may have always been coloured by nature, but never as brightly or vividly as this. As the band worked away in Kingston in upstate New York, in the midst of the Catskill mountains, the seasons were changing around them and Donahue was just taking it all in. It seemed like the right thing to do, he says.

"When it comes to writing, some of the first things I will grasp are what I see going on around me every day, the changes that are going on with the seasons and nature", he says. "The reason I will grasp them is that there is something going on within me that I can't really explain, all these changes and paradigm shifts. It's very hard to get enough self-reflection to see that this is a natural process as you bid bon voyage to a lot of old baggage, so you tend to fight it a little."

Every day, Donahue would drive to the studio and every day on the road into Kingston, he'd pass ponds and creeks, see trees and coyotes and watch the trees changing colour. It made him realise that fighting change was not an option. "I'd see that nature was quite happy with the changes it was going through, so I said I'd better lighten up on myself. I was going through a cycle and I took comfort from that and it became my anchor. The birds are going somewhere? Well, maybe I am too."

Whether selling secrets for a song or sending ships across an ocean, Donahue's lyrics command your attention like never before. Indeed, the most compelling aspect of The Secret Migration is that it is an album that quite simply could not have been made by young bucks. There's a maturity and a sensitivity here that is often avoided in rock, but which Donahue and Mercury Rev chose to embrace with gusto.

"It really comes down to how much of your life experiences you want to put into your music," he says. "You might have lived a rich and fruitful life by the time you're 21, but only choose to write about 'boy meets girl, boy is frustrated' and leave it at that. As we grow, the spectrum widens and it becomes a case of do you have the balls to talk about the other colours.

That comes with maturity or losing the fear of having something to lose or, in some cases, bigger balls.

"I don't know if I would have been able to write a lyric like 'lover lift me up' (from The Climbing Rose) on our first album because it would have sounded a bit corny. Now, I'm 40 years old and I don't give a shit what people think and that's what came through."

Donahue is finding too that much of what engages him now seems to be at odds with what rock is supposed to be about. "As we get older, we set different standards for ourselves and they tend to be truer to the nature we have within us rather than the one which is imposed socially or culturally or even within rock music. You know, 'hey fella, that's not a cool thing to say, we're really not interested in the idea of swans on a pond in winter'.

"If we're lucky, we lose that baggage as we get older and get on with what's true and sincere and really important."

Yet as a kid Donahue chose rock rather than classical or jazz because it appeared to be all-encompassing and limitless. "You could do anything," he remembers. Now, he feels that rock has narrowed its scope. "It seems that you can listen to Nirvana for three years, then it will be The Strokes, then it will be someone else and it's only new bands that we'll care about. I find that kind of absolutism incredibly dangerous in art and culture because everyone loses."

As an American, he's acutely aware that this parallels what's happening in politics. "You have senators and congressmen trying to set moral or religious agendas for entire populaces because they think they know what's best and what people want. It's a dangerous game to play because there is always a need for something different out there."

Such absolutism also applies, unfortunately, to American radio. "There's not a great diversity there, yet you know there's a huge diversity of people in the country who would like to hear everything from Sigur Rós to Britney Spears. But all we're going to get is Britney Spears until she gets fat and bloated. It's disheartening."

Yet in spite of it all, Donahue and Mercury Rev stand tall. It's been 15 years since the band first emerged, humming about Chasing A Bee and relishing their Carwash Hair. Few believed they would survive the wilful chaos of the early days, when it was the onstage behaviour of wayward vocalist and former member David Baker which made the headlines. Those days are long gone and Donahue, for one, doesn't miss them.

"I don't miss being onstage worrying about getting a smack in the back of the head or having something thrown at me," he says laconically. "Most bands end up like that, but that's how we began, we were a Doors biography in reverse." It's the simple things that appeal now. "What's precious to me is maintaining the friendships that I still have and that childhood wonder that's greater than ever now. What keeps me going is the potential that people see in my band and that I feel in myself. When people come to see a show, they're looking and seeing potential.

"Some people have followed us for 15 years now and that's really something special because they're willing to give us the freedom to experiment and try new things. If they wanted to hear the same thing over and over again, they'd buy Jesus and Mary Chain records. That's not a slight against them, but certain bands, God love them, do not change from album to album."

For all the talk of change and progression, some things remain constant. No matter what happens to their music, Donahue's home in the Catskills will continue to exert its silent, brooding presence.

"I was born in the mountains, I grew up in the mountains and I will probably die in the mountains," the singer notes. "They're to me what skyscrapers are to someone in New York. They're beautiful to look at and they're a bitch to drive in winter, but they're the place where I can intensely focus on writing and recording."

The Secret Migration is released on January 21st and reviewed on page 10. Mercury Rev play Vicar St, Dublin on March 7th