Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue on Nature, Psychedelia, and Finding His Strange Voice

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Music works in strange ways sometimes: I've been keeping tabs on Mercury Rev's career since I possessed the awareness to do so, but the long-running upstate NY rockers' new record Born Horses—essentially their return to original material after nearly a decade of not doing so (they released a Bobbie Gentry covers album in 2019)—really blew me away more than anything else I've ever heard from them. Jonathan Donahue's incantatory vocals combined with the band's newly forceful and swirling space rock really hits for me, and I was excited to talk to him about this great accomplishment, as well as all things pertaining to his fascinating career:

Tell me about how this one came together.
Well, I suppose they all come together in the same way—in those unexpected flickering moments where you reach for something to scribble on, or a small cassette to press record. And you hope to—I won't use the word capture, I'll use the word reveal, maybe a fragment of melody, a phrase or two. Over the next period of time, however long that is, these different phrases seem to swim upstream and find the melody or chord progression that goes with the melody or chord progression.

As you get older—I don't want to say older, wrong word—more experienced in whatever line of work you do in the world, you hopefully cultivate this sense of patience where you're not forcing these fish upstream with a splash, or rocks in the water. You're letting them go up at their own pace, making their way over these waterfalls. You think it's the right thing to marry the fish with the rock, but it's better to let these things occur on their own.

Tell me about developing and maturing that sense of patience. What's changed in you as a songwriter as you've gotten older?
Well, when we're all younger, we have this idea that whatever comes out of us in any walk of life, we own. We possess it. It originated in us. It was ours from the beginning. But my own experience over time has taught me that I'm more like the water faucet, not the water itself—and it's up to me to keep those pipes rust-free and unobstructed, so that when the water does flow, it flows as clear and as crisply as I can allow. This allows for something a lot more accurate and pure, without the stained idea of ownership—and when you step back from this idea of, "It's mine," a greater flow seems to happen. And I don't mean this in a negative or vague, New Age way. I mean it quite literally, with the greater ideas that are more pinpointed and have less work to do to get them where they want to go. Maybe it's an idea of streamlining. Maybe it's an idea later in life of just allowing the plant to grow, rather than shouting at it to open.

When it comes to your creative approach, have you ever faced any sort of block as a result of forcing it?
Yeah, I think that goes hand-in-hand with the feeling that it's mine. That writer's block emerges. It surfaces from the bottom of us at the very time we freeze over the lake and say, "Everything under the lake ice is mine." And that writer's block stays there as long as we have this idea that we have to keep reaching inside and pulling something out by the roots.

Now, if you would've asked me 35 years ago, I'd say, yes, of course, everything that comes from me is original and it's mine. But everyone has to go through this to understand, or at least see for themselves, that you're connected to this greater unconscious—at least, in the sense of art that you're pulling from this great pool that lives above and around us. Once you can accept that—I don't even want to say embrace it, because it's not easy all the time—but once you can at least accept that there's this great reservoir in and around us, you stop looking at the clock. The watched pot never boils, the same way the watched song never reveals itself. It just sits there, as these separate pieces of the jigsaw puzzle—and you're always looking for something on the floor that maybe you missed. Maybe one is broken or ripped and it doesn't fit.

Again, from my own point of view, it is this element that has not come easy to me—to step back and embrace an uncertainty. What may be revealed from the marble is not something you can predict. The statue seems, to me, to be already there. If I can allow the time, maybe that statue will reveal itself, even in a way that I didn't predict—even in a way that I'm not sure will be successful. But it still reveals itself.

The lyrics, the words, and the voice on the new album took me by great surprise. When I heard them coming out of me, I thought, "My God, what is this? Where is this bird from? How long is the bird going to live there inside of me? Is it going to leave? Is it going to stay? Is it going to nest? What's going on?" This uncertainty drives all of us, especially artists—and yet it seems to be in something of an antagonistic, or at least a contradictory, role for the consistency that an audience expects from its artist over time. Maybe a few little modifications around the edges. Maybe a few different shades. But give me what you gave me lthe ast album, last film, last book. For the artist, especially myself, this seems to at times be very bewildering—where that ratio is between the uncertainty that I desire just to get out of bed and start doing music again, and the consistency that I often crave, and I'm sure some of the audience of Mercury Rev desires at times.

I'd love to hear you talk about the aspect of audience expectation. As someone who's very familiar with your work, this record especially took me by surprise. It almost feels like a new chapter for the band, and you guys have subverted expectations quite a bit throughout your career. You do have a very devoted fan base and listenership, but you've also flirted with what some might call mainstream success at points, which creates a completely different set of expectations.
Well, it ties in very closely to what you were inquiring about earlier, which is time, and patience, and the idea of abandoning what you do for a result instead of embracing what you do simply for the enjoyment and the uncertainty that arises from it in itself. Either you'll nail the result because you're so focused on whatever it is you want—fame, fortune, a #1 record—or you'll fail miserably, because nothing can ever match the result of any of our own perspectives with that of the vast populace. For me, the expectation I have is that I could sleep well at night when the album is done, knowing I gave everything I had to it and that I didn't stand in the way of the album itself. That has to be my expectation, and that allows me to sleep well, whether this finds commercial success or not.

It's been well-documented that, when we finished mixing Deserter's Songs, Grasshopper and I looked at each other and said, "Well, this is the end of the band, isn't it?" Seven-minute songs in the age of Britpop and three-minute songs with guitars and choruses—and, we were doing stuff with oboes and flugelhorn solos. Over time, it was those experiences that remolded my own understanding of what it is I'm really after and what it is I'm not. I don't make excuses or apologies for the records that we've made, as though somehow that would change people's perspective in hindsight of why they didn't like an album, or some of the things that we've made over the last thirty years, or simply the last period of our music. The people that I do admire deeply—Lou Reed, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Terry Riley—had a fearlessness, and that's what I enjoy. too far over in trying to keep what they've always got.

Psychedelia, as a concept, is something that people think they have a good grasp on—but there's also people who have a very specific definition of what it might mean to them. I'm curious to hear you talk about what psychedelia has meant to you.
The way that I've always chosen to understand the word psychedelia as involving as many of the senses as possible—somewhat simultaneously, or interpenetrating each other. To me, it doesn't represent late '60s San Francisco. It doesn't represent a wah-wah pedal.It doesn't represent a crazy light show. It's something that seems to light up not only the senses, but also to overwhelm the conscious part of us that tries to compartmentalize these different feelings—not unlike some forms of meditation or art, where it's unspeakable. There's no way to describe the moment of watching something in nature, or some part of you in your own life reborn again. You can't just write down. There are no words for it.

When people use the word psychedelia, maybe musically they're pointing to something that seems a little further out musically than Limp Bizkit. But this is not necessarily an accurate idea of psychedelia. It seems to me something that opens up the senses, rather than putting them in a smaller room with closing walls.

One thing you've touched on quite a few times here is your relationship to the natural world—animals, running water.
My many references to nature, birds, or horses are always as a metaphor and allegory to what's going on in me. The idea is that what I see in nature, I see reflected not only in me, but both ways—something of a mirror. If we're talking about psychedelia, it's opened me up to take a more universal 360 look at myself—and I choose to describe this the best, I can because the birds and the horses and whatever else I've might've mentioned over time have these counter-quotes in me.

Let's talk about how growing up and residing in Buffalo has factored into your creative well-being.
When we were younger in Buffalo, we had such a small lexicon at the beginning to draw from. So, of course, the immediate surroundings find their way into the goulash that is any of us. When we're 16 or 17 and decide, "Hey, I've got to tell the whole world what the way that things are inside of me," it's this limited lexicon that makes us turn up the amps louder, beat the drums harder, and scream into the mic a little longer. Over time—not only as an artist, but in any walk of life—you find yourself pausing between words longer to be sure that you have the best opportunity to describe what it is you'd like to tell the person on the pillow next to you, without disguising it in some way.

The time we spent in Buffalo was heavily inspired by Tony Conrad and a number of artists that were there at that time—not because they were simply minimal, but because they understood that the wealth of information is between the notes. As Alan Watts might describe, it's between the stars—it's not the stars themselves. Information is space, and this has to begin within you. You can't just say, "Well, let's do a minimal album, and I'll play acoustic guitar and sing." That's not minimal. What's minimal is allowing for the emotional content to be able to reveal itself between these points that we might call words, or the drums, or the difference in colors in a painting.

It's something that you can't fake. You can't just watch a YouTube video of how to put more space in your music. It comes from the inside out. And, believe me I wish we could record and produce records every 18 months, like many bands. But the truth of it is is that I do lean heavily on time, and I'd rather say what it is I have to say over the span of years than just verbally popcorn the audience every 18 months.

That's a very understandable perspective.
I mean, it's not a very commercial one, I have to add. That's the sacrifice, and it's a real, true sacrifice. I would never try to confuse people and step away from the public for many years and come back with nothing changed. These days, everyone knows that's not true. So there is a genuine, sincere sacrifice.

Let's talk more about how your voice sounds on this record. The press materials cite Robert Creeley as an influence, and you are doing a bit of a spoken-word thing throughout.
I wouldn't say I welcomed it with open arms, but I was bewildered. I opened my mouth, and I wasn't singing to the music. When I did this, I was sitting by the riverside with an old cassette recorder, just musing. When you hear the voice on the record, it's quite close to the way I speak—but it doesn't mean I was speaking into the voice recorder, and it doesn't mean I was singing. I was just letting this other bird start chirping in me, and when I opened my mouth, out came the chirps.

I'm not blind. I understand that, when people hear this, everyone thinks, "My God, what's this guy doing? We want to hear the singing—we want to hear the Mariah Carey of it all!" And I'm as bewildered as the next person, but I also am not backing down from it. The voice tapes landed in the songs, and they nested there, and for a period of time I thought, "Well, I'll go in and re-record them with a very fancy German microphone in an studio, and I'll lean beyond these things." I tried, and the songs would not take them—and from that, I had to understand that I was faced with the greatest uncertainty of all—my own voice.

It took me a while to, at least, accept it. It took quite a bit from Grasshopper and Marion to say, "You know what? Trust it." And I thought, "Yes, but..." and they said, "Just trust it." I wasn't necessarily that enthusiastic to trust it at first, but I trust it now for whatever the result may come. Commercially, over the length of time that people might remember Mercury Rev, I trust it. I have to—it came out of me.

Talk to me about new permanent band members Marion Genser and Jesse Chandler's place in things, and how they influence this era of Mercury Rev.
You can hear Jesse did the piano, and the cosmic microwave background that goes through all the those beautiful smudges of atmosphere. Jesse is just the most beautiful being. When he sits down at the piano, he has a way of lilting and lullabying around, and that to me is something I will always cherish.

Marion approaches our music in the way that she knows best. She's a classical painter from Austria, and those brush strokes that aren't based on c7 minor fourth chords allow for a depth of perception that she works with all the time. Any artist works with a canvas, from 2-D to 3-D, and even deeper than that. This wonderful cloud of sound and imagery, the way it set in with the reverb piano, my vocals, Grasshopper's guitar, and his horn arrangements—I didn't see it coming at all.

Talk to me more about your relationship with Sean over the years.
After 40 years now, it's that space between the words—the space between what he might be thinking and what I might be thinking—that we allow to to just be, without explaining. One thing that's always been very evident to me is whenever we're together, especially in the musical world, we never say very much—we just play. We never have to describe too deeply what we're thinking. We don't say very much at all—we just are, and I suppose with someone in your own life who you're in a relationship, it's hard to see where you end and they begin. We see this when bands break up and they end up fighting over who owns the name and where the money goes. But in the best of times, it's not clear to me where we each end and begin, and I'm grateful for that. For both of us, we work very hard at that, because the pressures in music—with money, success—are always looking to fill those cracks with ice and burst them open wider.

You have to work very hard. You have to be very alert, and you have to step back from your own sense of "Mine, mine, mine" and say, "Ours, ours, ours." This is not easy. There are always great moments of doubt—small bursts of anger and frustration on everyone's part—but the healing of it is what the 40 years have led to. The ability to heal ourselves, and each other.

You've been making music professionally for nearly 40 years now. Tell me about what you've witnessed in terms of change.
That's a heavy question there. What I would say, if there was a moment where I could speak to your graduating class. I would say that over the course of my own time in music, follow your heart—because anything else you chase will disappear, dissolve before your very eyes, or turn against you. Go outside of time. Don't walk in sync with the crowd. Step outside of that, because whatever you find yourself recording, painting, writing, business-wise you can always have a measure of, "Do you sleep well at night? Do you wake up in the morning with the sense that you gave it your best?"

Everybody these days—and maybe always—is always looking for the original angle. If I mix a little bit of reggae with some Cajun and maybe put in a little bit of Bollywood, maybe that'll be original. I can look anyone straight in the eyes and say that, from my own experiences, you already are original—each of us. You don't have to do anything beyond that. Anything you do outside of that affects and likely contracts the originality that's already in you. It takes an artist a long time to perceive this clearly, and the best of the artists that you and I enjoy see this evolution towards a clearer perception of their own originality. It's this theatrical arc towards clarity of understanding, and it was in you all along.