Blackout Beach

Skin Of Evil

[3.5/5]

Frog Eyes braintrust Carey Mercer is to literary indie-oddity as Björk is to quirky electro-pop on Skin Of Evil, Mercer’s second solo release (and first one-man-show effort) in five years. Where Frog Eyes rock, Blackout Beach stalk, with Carey’s Bowie-esque caterwaul tamed to lower-decibel loop-de-loop confessions over delay-washed dirges about monks, changing denim to cashmere with a touch and some chick named Donna. Mercer manages to sing behind the beat, beside it, in front of it, all while tossing out upper-division stanzas that are mostly cryptic (“Three Men Drown In The River”), sometimes creepy (“William, The Crowd, It’s William”) and occasionally sublime, like his lament in “Biloxi, In A Grove, Clean Out His Eyes” where he posits, “the prisoner is like a dock in a bay.” (SOFT ABUSE; softabuse.com) Casey Lynch