Psychedelic rock band Mercury Rev will release their brand new studio album Born Horses on September 6 via Bella Union. The new single “A Bird of No Address” released today brings listeners back to earth following its latest single, the enchanting celestial opus “Ancient Love”. It meditated on loss and survival, re-establishing the album’s tone of vulnerability and awe, and a little frisson of fear, testifying to the frailty of human experience. Grasshopper shares, “As Rebecca Solnit (poet laureate of hope) writes, ‘The grounds for hope are in the shadows, in the people who are inventing the world while no one looks, who themselves don’t know yet whether they will have any effect.’ For all the birds of no address: Fly on!”

Born Horses is vocally inspired by the spirits of art minimalist Tony Conrad (LaMonte Young’s Dream Syndicate w/ John Cale and a close friend to The Velvet Underground) and beat poet Robert Creeley (one of the most influential American poets of the 20th century and an associate of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and the Black Mountain poets), acolytes of progressive thought and action who both taught at the University at Buffalo, the city where the band was formed.

The album title, named after the majestically rippling sixth track “Born Horses”, was chosen because its words resonate through the entire record, encompassing the idea of flight (“I dreamed we were born horses waiting for wings”) and the phrase “You and I” that appears at different junctures on the album. This is not the concept of two separate people, but two parts of oneself.  

Additionally, Mercury Rev has announced news of international tour dates including an Autumn European tour and further UK shows in early 2025. Full list of dates here.