Mercury rising
By Paul McDonald
Louisville Eccentric Observer
“When you hear Jim Carroll’s voice,
you know you’re in for an interesting ride.”
Back in 1994, Jim Carroll was recording some songs with Pearl Jam that would later be included on the soundtrack for the film “Basketball Diaries.” Carroll had been thinking of returning to the studio to record an album of new work, and he found his experience with Pearl Jam encouraging.
About that time, guitarist Lenny Kaye, who worked with Carroll in the past, introduced Carroll to producer Anton Sanko. The resulting collaboration between Sanko and Carroll has yielded Pools of Mercury; recently released on Mercury Records. It’s Carroll’s first CD of new music and poetry since Rhino Records released a retrospective of his work, A World Without Gravity, in 1993.
Pools of Mercury delivers an eclectic blend of music and spoken-word backed by the hypnotic instrumentation of Sanko and his brother Erik, and Tristan Avakian and Frank Vilardi. Opening with the evocative “Train Surfing,” Carroll’s metric delivery, backed by Vilardi’s percussion and Sanko’s keyboards, intones a shamanic quality reminiscent of Jim Morrison: “Who surfs beside me, tattooed into my flesh not by ink/But by fire, the god of the crossroads, the messenger god/The god of the railroad, who laughs as I do at the commuters beneath …”
“Train Surfing” leads directly into “Falling Down Laughing,” co-written with Robert Roth. It’s one of the strongest songs Carroll has performed since “People Who Died” in 1980. From there the CD moves like an ethereal wave through poems accompanied by percussion and electronic ambient strains, to songs of downright unabashed grunge.
Carroll is primarily known as a poet, and the poetic pieces, most notably “Message Left On A Phone Machine” and “Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain,” are themselves probably worth the price of the CD. But Carroll’s excursions into song, such as “Desert Town,” “Pools of Mercury,” and the aforementioned “Falling Down Laughing,” are impressive enough to merit Carroll’s continued foray into music.
Pulling this all together is Carroll’s voice, which sounds as distinctive as William Burroughs. Occasionally, Carroll’s singing sounds timid and you wish he would trust his instincts and let go. But he trusts in the power of his words, and when you hear his voice, you know you are in for an interesting ride.