Album Review: Mercury Rev- Bobbie Gentry’s ‘The Delta Sweete’ Revisited

Even though it’s precisely the type of album my dad would have imposed on me when I was a kid, I’d never heard Bobbie Gentry’s 1968 song cycle The Delta Sweete until this week.  It’s absolutely bonkers!  Bobbie Gentry’s ‘The Delta Sweete’ Revisited, Mercury Rev’s exquisite interpretation of the album, is far less loopy.  Yet even as the guest vocalists including Beth Orton, Hope Sandoval, Phoebe Bridgers, Norah Jones and Lucinda Williams attempt to ratchet back the weirdness, their languid contributions are still wondrously eerie.  These creepy bedtime lullabies are the stuff of lurid Southern gothic nightmares.


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Peter Tork of the Monkees has died.

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The soul artist Jackie Shane has died.

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Kofi Burbridge, a longtime associate of Derek Trucks, has died.

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Yuck!  The circa-1985 mainstream rock production on Gary Clark Jr.’s This Land is a dealbreaker.  The bluesman’s new songs sound as if they’re intended to played alongside the Firm’s “Radioactive” and Eric Clapton’s “Forever Man.”  RIYL: corporate rock, Foreigner, groupthink.

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I don’t intend to listen to Angel Bat David’s The Oracle again, but I admire every aspect of her lo-fi sound collage.  RIYL: truth, International Anthem, Tape Op magazine.

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I expected Chris Potter’s Circuits to be a contender for my album of the year.  Boy, am I ever disappointed.  At first blush, the saxophonist’s collaboration with keyboardist James Francies, bassist Linley Marthe and drummer Eric Harland seems substantially less than the sum of its formidable parts.

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If I were king of the world, I’d mandate that the four best selections on Alicia Olatuja’s lovely Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women dominate the pop charts for the remainder of the year.  RIYL: Kandace Springs, tastefulness, Lizz Wright.

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Cochemea Gastelum’s All My Relations is a righteous jam.  RIYL: Kamasi Washington, motion, Herbie Mann.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)