Upper Wilds: 'Mercury' turns noise into an editing exercise

Mercury is a 38-minute argument for editing. The fourth Upper Wilds album runs ten tracks, and the longest cut, the closer 'Dying Star,' stays at 4:41. That matters because loud is easy and short is not. The early word on the LP is blunt: it's loud as hell, but nothing's wasted, only the good stuff. The durations line up. The title track opens at 4:21; 'Fever' and 'Death Song #3' stay in the threes; 'Hellfire' and 'Dying Star' edge just past four minutes near the end. There is no side-long piece, no seventeen-minute closer, no sprawl.

The restraint is the point. Upper Wilds is a guitar-led, astronomy-focused band tied to Dan Friel and the Parts & Labor lineage, and Mercury arrives via Thrill Jockey on a limited vinyl run. Parts & Labor is a noise outfit amid a revival, and its double disc leaned into proggy excess. Mercury is set against that album, and the contrast shows in the simplest metrics: ten tracks, 38:42, none exceeding five minutes. The titles keep the sky and the grave close, 'Reaper,' 'Green-Wood Cemetery,' 'Hellfire,' 'Dying Star,' but the sequence gives the tone a limit. The record can face mortality for 38 minutes. It will not ask for an hour.

What fails is the sameness risk tied to an edit this strict. Each track is loud and guitar-led, and almost every name points toward the same way out. The stretch from 'Reaper' to 'Green-Wood Cemetery' to 'Timekeeper' to 'Dark Road' holds a single mood, and the weight rests on riff and tone to tell apart songs that a list alone cannot tell apart. That is where a repeat listen will challenge the release. The album wagers the guitar can stop the center from smudging. Based on the power of the duration, the wager stays controlled.

Mercury contends that a noisy album can nonetheless be precise, and it builds that argument across 38:42.

The tracklist

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