Mercury Rev

On October 6, 2026, Kafe Antzokia in Bilbao welcomes Mercury Rev, a band formed in Buffalo in the late 1980s around Jonathan Donahue and guitarist Grasshopper. Born at the crossroads of noise and indie rock, they have gradually shifted their songwriting toward orchestral, psychedelic pop, marked by a high-register vocal timbre, string and brass arrangements, and atmospheric textures that converse with dream pop and film music. Their early records, Yerself Is Steam (1991) and Boces (1993), capture their most abrasive phase; See You on the Other Side (1995) opens the melodic turn that crystallized on Deserter’s Songs (1998) and All Is Dream (2001). A long-standing collaboration with producer and former member David Fridmann has refined that meticulous sound, which the group has continued to explore on The Secret Migration (2005), Snowflake Midnight (2008), The Light in You (2015), and the tribute album Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited (2019). Live, Mercury Rev often reimagines its repertoire, alternating orchestrated ballads, folk pulses and psychedelic detours with arrangements that breathe and change from tour to tour. In Bilbao, that journey is presented without unnecessary frills: songs, nuances and a stage tension meticulously crafted.