Mercury Program- From The Vapor Of Gasoline  (Tiger Style) If, like me, you loved Tortoise’s first album but find yourself increasingly disappointed by their embrace of pretentious electronics, then boy do I have a band for you! The vibraphone chimes. The bass bubbles near the surface. Occasional vocals weave in and out of the spidery structure, never rising above a whisper. Graceful, shimmering waves that escalate to churning tides that pull you down and leave you struggling for breath. The Mercury Program hint at the flowing, relaxed pseudo-jazz of The Sea And Cake, Dianogah’s instrumental angularity, and Slint’s hypnotic beauty, not to mention pulling off Tortoise’s patented post-rock routine better than Tortoise themselves. From The Vapor Of Gasoline slides effortlessly from sharp-cornered math rock on “Re-Inventing A Challenge For Machines” to the airy, tranced out singing and ringing vibraphone of “Down On Your Old Lung” and Karate-like minimalism and stop-on-a-dime precision of “The Sea Is In Here”, while the band’s mysterious sound unfolds like a complex map, as the reoccurring theme of travel and locales in over half of the song titles (“Nazca Lines Of Peru”,“Highways Like Veins”, and “Leaving Capitol City For Good” being 3 good examples) enhances The Mercury Program’s exotic nature. Incredible.  (erika) [back]