EARTH GIRL HELEN BROWN "Mercury"
(Empty Cellar Records)




I gotta admit that the album name is so big and promient that I mistook it as the band name.

Mercury, the latest album from Earth Girl Helen Brown starts out with a very lo-fi sounding track called "Fox Trott", it is a very Ty Segall-esque song.

She then shifts 180 degrees to "Earth Elevator"; a country western song about leaving the planet.
Finishing out sdie A (spelled wrong, on purpose, like on the album) is "Space Travel is in My Blood", a synthy, chorusy, ambient pike.

So then a funny thing happened to me. This album is actually taped over a Joni Mitchell album, Mercury is only 6 songs long.

After sdie A was finished the album cut back to that Joni Mitchell album, and I gotta say it was pretty bad.

Even though it is not the most professional thing to do, I kind of really like the idea of recording over shit albums, give them a new life, a new purpose.

Plus it saves the artist some money, and it IS recycling, so like hug a tree man!
After a quick fast forward the tape auto-reversed and side B was all queued up.

Wicked cool bass line intro on "Set the Woods on Fire", a little mischievous diddy about just burning it all down.

"The Other Man" is a weird "Florence and the Machine" sounding entity, very ambient. It's got this thing with synth beeps going off here and there.

Finally "Starlight" concludes the album, its kind of fucking weird as well.

Cassette features a 4 panel color J-card
upcycled cassette (mine was Joni Mitchells "Dog Eat Dog")

https://earthgirlhelenbrown.bandcamp.com/album/mercury

-- Chuck Wolfe