I don’t know if we still have supergroups; it’s a term that seems resigned to the 70’s prog-o-sphere or reserved for bands such as Crosby, Stills & Nash, and, to a leeser extent Young, but Mercury’s Antennae, born of the coming together of multi-instrumentalist Erick R. Scheid (The Palace of Tears), vocalist Dru Allen and bassist Cindy Coulter (both from This Ascension), has proven a major success and their analog meets electro, blend of darkwave meets showgaze meets gothic-dream-pop meets ambient sound, has been eagerly lapped up by astute and discerning alternative music fans.
Now they give us The Veil Opaque v.2 a quartet of essentially remixed tracks, that further underlines just how adventurous and eclectic the band is. The title track comes on in a haze of brooding basslines and howling guitar sonics, digital drums, and surprisingly gentle vocal treatments, the whole thing hazy and hallucinogenic. The “veil” in question is the one that hides our unconscious thoughts and memories; lifting it frees us to understand ourselves better and to evolve as people.
This is bookended by “Through the Veil,” which evolves through many sonic seasons, from drifting ambience to a darkness-infused dream-pop to a spacious electronic soundscape to heady walls of noise.
Between these, “Deer Island,” a radical remix of “As I Lay Hidden (Deer Island)” is rendered into a piece of unadorned, resonant acoustic beauty, a dark-folk piece that allows Dru Allen’s vocals to soar and “O Virtus Sapientia,” the band’s reworking of a 12th centuary devotional choral piece, again leaves Allen’s voice largley untethered liberated to rise to ethereal and angelic realms.
It might be tempting to tag Mercury’s Antennae as merely goth, post-punk, shoegaze, or any number of the genres they might glance through the liminal fringes of. As this fantastic collection shows, this is a band that, even having created songs that are adventurous and exploratory in the first place, jumping, storming, or even ignoring generic rules and demarcations as they go, can further push their creations via remixes and reimaginings into places that few contemporary bands have ever ventured.
