If the sanctuary within the tonality of Useless Wonder! is anything to go by, The Mercury Sounds have become masters of carving relics of nostalgic experimentation that border on divine intervention.
The Baltimore-based duo, Jason Stauffer and Josh Krechmer, have been long-hauling their sonic telepathy since primary school. Two decades later, they’re still refusing to colour within the lines. Their fusion of indie-pop vitality and folk-rock introspection culminates in Useless Wonder!, a cosmic lament steeped in lo-fi 70s alchemy. Through natural vocal proclivity and delicate lyrical agony, they sculpted an aching confessional that stings with the sentiment of not being built for a world that keeps shifting beneath your feet.
The way the vocals bleed with weary existentialism against the gauzy swell of warm distortion and glimmering, melancholic strings carries the same weight as a memory you can’t outgrow. The verses tether you to vulnerability, while the chorus throws you into an orbit of quiet resignation.
Even though it would be impossible to crown a Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan in our modern and fractured industry, it’s clear that if Useless Wonder! had surfaced fifty years ago, it would be playing through grainy AM radios as a national folk treasure.
The Mercury Sounds exhaled a truth for the quiet disenfranchised who’ve long since given up pretending they fit the mould, if you can align to that particular branch of melancholy, hit play.
Useless Wonder! is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast