Three songs into Trey Anastasio’s new solo acoustic album, Mercy, I was in the middle of writing in my notes, “this could be the song or montage moment for a character in a Disney movie, probably with animal interaction, or magic,” and without missing a beat, right into my earhole, Trey sings, “let it go,” four times.
This simple 9-song acoustic experience wanders through several versions of Trey. While at times it might seem like an unthreaded offering of mixed songs, it is still part of the self-enjoyment process that this guitar wizard & storied songwriter has aged into. The range of Trey’s tone and songwriting displayed on this album is broad in versions, but short in depth, by design. We get a form of Trey in each offering, including Disney Trey, Nashville Trey, Broadway Trey, Coffee Shop Trey, and even Kid’s Album Trey.
For example, much like the title of song #6 would suggest, “Roll Like a River” feels country, feels Nashville, feels like the Cumberland being explained in Trey’s acoustic laments. It has the slow-ballad bounce of a standard RCA romp that would be better suited in the feminine tones of the latest Nashville voice, or even a classic sound, but Nashville Trey and his tremolo voice are on display, and you can enjoy himself.
The coyote energy of the album takes place in “Hey Stranger”, where the bucket is flipped over, poured out, and left behind for a dance with a Broadway villain. Probably tall, shadowy, dressed in a voodoo cape or at least in darks and purples, you can see the tempting sage of this part of the story singing “come crash for a minute”. He’s stepping out from a shakedown alleyway, “hey stranger…” This tune is more in the vernacular than most of the other album offerings that seek to be poetic about mixing phrases like “ceaseless call” and “cherry red electric morning”.
The last song, “Ever Changing Tide” is a touch too whiny for the extremely hopeful tone that the album hits on song #8 right before it, with “Arc.” There is no lament in “Arc”, no pessimism to call on, it stands out from the other purposes we have listened to so far. It feels like a hopeful mossy mountain spring as Trey meanders the finger-plucking through eddy pools on his way back into the stream. Singing, “I am always here,” it is the albums support song, a bright message carried to the author in the early waking hours from the phenomena of morning glow & ether.
The title track is simple and executed well and makes a statement on Trey’s version of that heavy, special word, “mercy”. That word has its own set & setting within the musical universe. It is a root word in every musician’s matrix, and it is part of the sentiment that comes from emoting your human experience through the catalogue of possible tones you can produce within the time you have and the notes you can play. Trey, has mercy.
Have mercy.
