Jim Carroll - Pools of Mercury
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CD Details
Artist: Jim CarrollEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1998-10-06
Music Label: Polygram Records
Soundtracks:
- Train Surfing
- Falling Down Laughing
- Zeno's Law Of High-Heeled Shoes
- Desert Town
- My Ruins
- It Goes
- Pools Of Mercury
- Things That Fly
- I Am Not Kurt Schwitters
- Hairshirt Fracture
- Female As Thunder
- Cinco De Mayo
- Message Left On A Phone Machine
- The Beast Within
- 8 Fragments For Kurt Cobain
Music reviews of Pools of Mercury
Music Review: Jim Carroll's Last, Great Album
Rating: 5 Stars
I was a huge Jim Carroll fan when "Catholic Boy" came out in 1980. Smart and raw, it spoke to me in ways that other punk didn't. I dutifully bought "Dry Dreams" and "I Write Your Name" which each had their moments but lacked the punch and uniqueness of the first album. And then life and other interests intervened and I lost track of what else Mr. Carroll had released. When he passed away this fall, I looked up the discography and saw the 1996 release "Pools of Mercury." I had trepidation about paying nearly $30 for a forgotten out of print CD, but I pulled the trigger out of catharsis, closure, and respect.
Oh my god. I don't know how I missed this. It's brilliant.
First, you have to understand that this album is half melopoeia (spoken word backed up by music) and half straight songs. If you recoil from that, don't buy it, but you're denying yourself genius. The bad bongo-playing beat poets gave melopoeia a bad name, but done right it can be stunning. The most accessible example of melopoeia I can think of is The Doors' (the other Jim's) "The Wasp" ("I want to tell you about Texas Radio and the Big Beat"). For extra credit you can listen to Bruce Cockburn's "Hoop Dancer."
On this album, the music behind the spoken word is carefully crafted, rich, dense, and textural. I listened to the album a dozen times before it all soaked in. I still listen to it, over and over.
The title song "Pools of Mercury" is fabulous and sounds like nothing else you've ever heard -- and makes you wish that his second and third albums had this kind of care put into them -- but the best parts of this album are the spoken word. "My Ruins," "I am Not Kurt Schwitters," and "Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain" are, simply, stunning.
I do have two quibbles. First, Carroll's voice, while clear and strong in the spoken word pieces, is mixed very far back in the songs, making his lyrics very difficult to decipher. And the spoken word piece "Zeno's Paradox of Shoes" -- the second track on the album -- is just silly and out of place.
If you love the literate side of Jim Carroll (meaning more than just "People Who Died"), you'll love this.
Jim, I am sad that there is not more, but this is unique, haunting, and glorious.
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