“Elevation, don’t go to my head.” It’s a classic brainworm from a track off Television’s undisputed masterpiece debut, Marquee Moon—one Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer has had knocking around in his skull for at least a decade.
“Because it’s a Television lyric, I’d sing, ‘Television, it goes to my head.’ I mean, I don’t want to steal that line—it’s a great line,” says the singer/guitarist for the idiosyncratic Canadian act. “But I did wonder if there is a way to honor it.”
The tightly wound tribute to New York City’s ’70s art-punk scene, “Television, A Ghost In My Head” is the latest single from Frog Eyes’ 10th album, The Open Up, available March 7 via Paper Bag. Almost 25 years after bubbling up from Vancouver with a disquieting noise-rock agenda and a love-it-or-hate-it literary style that owed a considerable debt to Nick Cave, the band’s creative fulcrum remains Mercer and his drummer wife, Melanie Campbell. Both are quite proud that Frog Eyes is still producing music that matters.
“Any dolt can put 10 great songs together,” says Mercer. “But not any dolt or dunce can make 10 records—especially in the face of commercial indifference. I’m a special dolt, a remarkable dunce.”
Still, Mercer isn’t into milestones. “I’m not sure if we’ll even mark our 25th anniversary in any commercial way,” he says. “I think I’d rather make an 11th record, push through, then pour my psychic energy into really pushing a ‘remember when.’ But I’m very grateful that it was music that became the context or shaper or definer of my life—at least my working life. It’s what I do. So thanks to that billiard ball that sent me careening toward this life and not some other possibility.”
We’re proud to premiere Frog Eyes’ “Television, A Ghost In My Head.”
—Hobart Rowland
