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Skin of Evil is hardened, seamless, and totally unrelenting, everything full-bodied and visceral about Frog Eyes squeezed until it sublimates. This is scary, ethereal shit. It’s also a gorgeously captivating half hour of bedroom pop pushed screaming out of bed.
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Skin of Evil, out on Soft Abuse Jan. 20, is a breathtaking, mesmerizing record, a lyrical song cycle about love and loss, affection and anger and alienation.
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Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.
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Alternative PressMercer manages to sing behind the beat, beside it, in front of it, all while tossing out upper-division stanzas that are mostly cryptic, sometimes creepy, and occasionally sublime. [Apr 2009, p.134]
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FilterBlackout Beach songs ultimately tremble in the sun of lyrical exactitude--abstractions are their safe house after raking flight. [Holiday 2008, p.92]
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Skin of Evil may come off as an unwieldy curio at first pass, but lingering listens will reveal the gripping gothic undertow of Mercer's warts-and-all songwriting, even for newcomers.
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Ironically, the general listening population--if they’re paying attention at all; hey, there’s a chance!--will find this to be Mercer’s most accessible, enjoyable work to date.
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Skin of Evil is not unlike Mercer himself—prickly, unfriendly, demanding, but fascinating and compelling just the same.
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The narrators’ weaknesses become the songs’ weaknesses; Mercer apparently prefers to sustain verisimilitude at the expense of Skin of Evil’s potential. It’s a bold artistic move that lends itself to the page far more convincingly than it does to the ear.
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With dense puddles of minimalist reverb and feedback, it's experimental and challenging, in that it's sloppy and hard to appreciate.
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Under The RadarThe album suffers both a lack of the compromise that comes with collaboration, and an inability to identify then serve the muse that all of his characters are whining about. [Spring 2009, p.70]