Pitchfork

It's unfortunate that imagination is so frequently seen as antithetical to sincerity. We expect personal truths and broad revelations from musicians, but we often expect these insights should be delivered through a mundane, relatable form of honesty. Sure, singers often borrow words, ideas and emotions from the experiences of others, ranging from friends and family to long-dead or non-existent cultural and historical figures. But these identities are almost always kept somehow separate from that of the singer, who in turn manipulates these secondary personas into acceptable personal statements and observations.

Though Carey Mercer's voice is heard throughout The Golden River, the identity of the album's narrator always seems to be shifting and slipping. The album is less a work of cognizant storytelling than a fever dream. Personal and cultural memory bleed together, as Mercer spins fractured images lifted straight from the pages of Grimm Brothers fairy tales and Homeric Epics. And yet, nothing about The Golden River seems contrived or gratuitously literary: its otherworldly sonic and lyric richness is matched at every turn by the striking immediacy of Mercer's wide-eyed delivery. The result is a record every bit as stunning and imaginative as it is memorable and affecting, and one of the most unique and interesting I've heard in ages.

"One in Six Children Will Flee in Boats" opens the album with a flimsy, strummed guitar figure that's immediately, strikingly overshadowed by Mercer's breathy gasp. Suddenly, a rich swell of guitar, drums, and keyboards evokes a grandiosity bringing to mind glam-era Bowie; Mercer captures the Thin White Duke's anthemic and melodic delivery, but couples it with a frenzied, grizzled intensity and the gruff, world-weary sensibility of Tom Waits. Mercer matches this intensity lyrically, singing "Over that ridge, a hunter lives/ Stake him out with broken gifts/ By the light, by the merry men/ Who gave his lives when he gave knives to children/ Raise him up, stake him up/ Grab the sun and drink his blood in cups!" Out of context, it may seem nonsensical, but the conviction with which Mercer sings renders it an unnervingly powerful image.

After an ethereal instrumental break, "Time Reveals Its Plan at Poisoned Falls" plays up the operatic nature of Mercer's voice, as he rattles off funhouse mirror images of a royal court and hissed accusations of jealousy. Rather than simply sounding crazy, he conveys the doomed frenzy of a prophet. About halfway through the song, he sings as if possessed by the spirit of the monarch whose death he has forseen: "I'm the head of the queen/ I float around the night unseen/ And I know when to scream 'oh baby wake up!'" At a mere 1:29, "Time Reveals Its Plan at Poisoned Falls" is both a vivid fantasy and a desperate plea to return to consciousness and reality, a potent juxtaposition that Mercer hints at throughout the record.

A procession of similarly strong songs follows, each one sonically rich and brimming with melody and imagination. Only "Orbis Magnus" temporarily shifts the tone of the record to one of unadulterated, introspective sadness. In a subdued mumble, Mercer intones: "You can have boyfriends, but not men/ You want your words to be penned/ There's women on the barge, on the waters that bend." Here, Mercer seems to embody the timeless trope of the lonely monster, his previous outbursts reduced to a barely-contained air of self-loathing.

The Golden River closes with two of its strongest tracks. "World's Greatest Concertos" is a fit of gleeful self-destruction, as if Mercer has finally been driven mad by the images he has seen, shouting "Encapsulate the body and emasculate the body/ And hold the burning waters, the tubs of burning waters/ Holiday!/ The trees are bones and dipped in wazing burning cones and call a celebration/ The master's burnt in his burning station." Mercer's shrieking falsetto it segues into the sublime "Picture Framing the Gigantic Men Who Fought on Steam Boats", the most beautiful song on The Golden River and also quite possibly the most unsettling. The vocals are slightly more subdued here, cushioned by breathy backup singing provided by Carolyn Mark. Right before it ends, "Picture Framing" takes on a somber and ominous tone, as Mercer repeats, "I'll keep on sailing on/ Until the rosy-pink dawn," cleverly citing a Homeric epithet to suggest that his voyage will, in fact, never really end. It's a stunning moment of resignation, as the narrator accepts his place in this terrifyingly vivid fantasy world.

This album seems to exist in a world apart from our own. From Melanie Campbell's insistent, simple, and often strangely cartoonish drumming to Carey Mercer's fantastical lyrics and overwrought delivery, The Golden River taps directly into your imagination, short-circuiting any traditional notions of what should constitute "sincere" and "emotional" music. These songs are the lost soundtracks to those frantic, epic dreams that you can never remember in their entirety, but stay with you for the rest of your life.