Review: The Mercury Tree – Self Similar

Style: Experimental Rock, Math Rock, Microtonal, Progressive Rock (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: black midi, weird King Crimson, Kayo Dot, Battles, Squid, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s microtonal albums I guess
Review by: Christopher
Country: US-OR
Release date: 7 September, 2023

What the heck is a microtone? So: most Western music you hear is conducted on a typical 12-notes-to-the-octave scale, made up of semitones (A, A#, B, C, C#, etc). But these notes aren’t immutable and frequencies exist between those notes; microtones can be accessed within the 12-note scale (e.g. by bending guitar strings), and we can divide the octave into a different number of notes to access microtonal intervals—we just don’t often do so because it sounds “out of tune” relative to the 12-note scale we’re all used to. It’s analogous to the colour spectrum: we think in terms of red, blue, yellow, etc, but there are finer gradations of colour to choose from, as anyone who’s swatched a bathroom will know.¹

With that foregrounding out the way, let’s commence: The Mercury Tree! This Oregonian experimental rock threepiece are veterans of the underground, their proclivity for unorthodox innovation having not exactly proved a recipe for mainstream recognition. On previous outing Spidermilk, the trio decided “our music is just too accessible” and so began to play with microtonality; sixth album Self Similar continues that experiment. On both releases, The Mercury Tree divide the octave into seventeen equal divisions² (which they further subdivide into thirty-four and sixty-eight notes). Atop strange time signatures and polyrhythms aplenty, the result is disorienting, dissonant music that presents an active challenge to the listener.

Right from the disorientating continuing ascents of “Grown Apart” you know you’re in for some Weird Shit™. The eerie ambiences, off-kilter lead lines, haunting vocals, and crashing noisy sections are back in force and turned to a variety of ends: whether it’s the driving desert rock rhythm of “Stay the Corpse”, akin to Queens of the Stone Age if their physiognomy was being warped by eponymous Thing from The Thing; the counting challenge of “Dreamwalking” where echoing plucks cycle contrapuntally in and out of making intuitive sense; or the terrifying “Binary” which makes simple acoustic chords sound nightmarish before exploding into possibly the heaviest section on the album as the double bass pedal pounds away and Ben Spees screeches “BABY, BABY, BABY, BABY” in fire alarm falsetto. The Mercury Tree are back and they’re harder to describe than ever before.

And they’re joined by some veterans of the avant-garde world. Daimon Waitkus (Jack O’ The Clock) provides the surreal percussiveness of  hammered dulcimer, tongue drum and psaltery, as well as providing guest vocals, on “Recursed Images” and the powerful closer “After the Incident”. Both are proggy excursions through a variety of eerie soundscapes, from ghostly clanging to thick mathy riffage to bubbling keyboard-driven chaos to the unexpectedly beautiful melodies that soar over the usual chaos on the final track. Meanwhile, “Self Similar” features Gabriel Riccio (The Gabriel Construct) on lead vocals, whose deeper timbre is a pleasing switch-up before turning disconcerting when harmonising with Spees. The haunting vibe (more than usual) gives way to a short explosion of harsh vocals before becoming, somehow, more haunted in its vibes as pensive ambiences glide over an outré piccolo bass riff.

The main problem with any work like this will always be accessibility. I really like what I hear on Self Similar, which proves a consummate blend of the two strands of The Mercury Tree’s style, but this is a band who will always be more intellectually interesting than emotionally connective. If you love watching Adam Neely and Jacob Collier expound on music theory esoterica and analysing jazz music theory then you’ll likely be very open to what The Mercury Tree are selling, but for most listeners there’s something necessarily Brechtian about this willful experimentation; such an inherently intellectualised approach to music can be somewhat distancing to the lay listener. And yet sometimes The Mercury Tree hit upon a vein of sublime sonic surreality, and I feel like they’re accessing something more real within me than they did on Spidermilk. 

Self Similar builds smoothly and confidently upon Spidermilk’s tentative foundations, successfully marrying the xenharmonic zaniness with their wild, mathy songwriting style in order to create a musical puzzle box that will prove infinitely rewarding to those willing to invest the necessary time and open-mindedness to access it. This is The Mercury Tree’s weirdest album yet, but it might also be their best, seeing them refine a defiantly unconventional sound unlike anything you’ve heard before. That alone is more than enough reason to take a chance on them. Listen. Then listen again. They might just open up a whole new sonic dimension for you.

Recommended tracks: Grown Apart, Stay the Corpse, After the Incident
You may also like: similar experimental rock: Jack O’ The Clock, The Gabriel Construct, Nick Prol & the Proletarians, Ventifacts; microtonal metal: Kostnateni, Blut Aus Nord, Jute Gyte, Scarcity
Final verdict: 8/10 (9/10 if you love outlandishly experimental music)

1. I can’t talk theory all day, I’ve got a review to write (also I don’t know much about music theory). For more on microtonality, I found this video a helpful crash course ↩︎
2. Why 17 equal divisions of the octave? The Mercury Tree explain in this interview ↩︎

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

The Mercury Tree is:
– Ben Spees (vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, keyboards)
– Connor Reilly (acoustic and electronic drums)
– Oliver Campbell (bass, voice)