Photo by Shawn McDonald

Frog Eyes’ wild front man, Carey Mercer believes in the transcendental, positive power of music – which is lucky for him, because he was faced with an audience that vacillated between hostility and indifference for most of his band’s stellar performance at the Mercury Lounge this past Saturday night.

The band was in town to support their excellent new double-LP, Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, which was just released on the Dead Oceans label. Following three opening bands: Beach Fossils, Pearly Gate Music, and You Can Be A Wesley – all of whom delivered under-whelming sets, Frog Eyes took the stage promptly at midnight and launched into a stunning, powerful version of “Odetta’s War” from the new LP.

Despite their impressive set-opener, any good vibes in the room were quickly destroyed by the weekender-heavy crowd’s needless talking and heckling, including many loud and rude comments made by various members of the opening bands. Mercer, undaunted, began regaling the crowd with his childhood dream of being a stand-up comedian instead of a rock musician before launching into another song from Paul’s Tomb. To be fair to his detractors, Mercer’s laconic and somewhat meandering stage banter between songs DID kill the band’s momentum a bit at times, and completely belied his manic, possessed Carny Barker musical performances. He shuddered and shook as if his guitar was giving him mild electric shocks, and he let loose vocals that were part howling invocation and part old timey rave-up exorcism.

The other musicians were no slouches either. Ryan Beattie’s fluid guitar playing and Megan Boddy’s versatile double keyboard playing (which she rocks Ray Manzarek style – where she plays all the bass lines on the keyboard), and her beautiful backing vocals perfectly accompanied Mercer’s frenzied singing and guitar style. His wife, Melanie Campbell’s simple almost martial drumming underpinned all of the songs incredibly well.

Many of the songs broke down into tribal drumming and spiritualized vocalizing that would send chills down Tom Waits’ spine (at one point Mercer broke into an ecstatically demented chorus from “I Put A Spell On You” that could’ve out-screamed Old Screamin’ Jay), only to rise up into tightly controlled chaos as Mercer, Beattie and Boddy deftly wove intricate melodies and notes around each other. In this manner, with scant attention from the crowd, they ran through an hour’s worth of old favorites such as an all-but-unrecognizable, almost gospel version of “Latex Ice Age”, from their 2003 breakthrough LP The Golden River and “Ship Destroyer”, from The Folded Palm, as well as the majority of the new songs off Paul’s Tomb.

The amazing performances given by all of the band members were lost on most of the crowd, who seemed to be in the wrong venue; perhaps some of them (such as the random woman who kept begging them to play “anything I can dance to”) couldn’t get into the chooch-central club Element next door? Perhaps they were too drunk to realize they were on the wrong line and wound up in Mercury Lounge by mistake? Who knows? Despite these setbacks, Mercer spoke throughout the show of his love of music, even dedicating an early song to “the power of music” which he jokingly referred to as a “meta-dedication”. All joking aside, Frog Eyes’ music is all about passion and a need to express an idiosyncratic and very unique vision, which seems to be sadly lacking in most bands’ music currently. One can’t really imagine Mercer doing anything else with his life, childhood dreams of comedy stardom aside.

In an interesting turn of events, just as Mercer looked ready to throw in the towel before announcing their last song, (which turned out to be a ripping, frog-eyed version of “Cloud of Evil”, originally recorded by Mercer’s electronic side project, Blackout Beach), the crowd grew more enthusiastic. Mercer and Beattie took the hint and decided they could do ‘one more’ as the band tore into a ridiculously epic rendition of “A Flower In A Glove” that pushed the ten minute mark. The audience was finally acting like they were at a rock show, and excitedly called out for more. The band capitulated and ended the set with an awe inspiring version of arguably their best recorded song thus far, and a live favorite for several years: “Bushels”, from the 2007 LP, Tears of the Valedictorian. The crowd acted genuinely elated as the song ended. It seems that Mercer’s faith in music was rightfully justified, even if some members of the audience clearly didn’t appreciate it.