Carey Mercer is Blackout Beach

This is nothing like the time I blacked out on a beach. I'll have what Carey Mercer's on.

Carey Mercer is a weird Canadian. Before calling his solo work Blackout Beach, it existed under the pseudonym Bertrand Russell and The Country Club. Then, luckily, he formed Frog Eyes with Spencer Krug. It was still weird, but not country club weird.

Previous Blackout Beach records delved into Mercer's psyche, or so the press release tells me. Wobbly in vocal tension, Mercer opened up his skull for all to behold. His new record Skin of Evil tells the intimate stories of “Donna” through the voices of all her past and present lovers.

Fellow kooky Canuck Dan Bejar, a.k.a. Destroyer, had these random thoughts about Skin of Evil:

Maybe it's about a girl, about salvation's undoing through romantic love, wreckage of this kind—no matter. The important thing is that this is the first time I've really heard theatrics and atmospherics in a record, and so much of both, except maybe for Roxy Music's Avalon, which this record reminds me a lot of, if only for how incredibly well you can hear every last thing, which is good, cause every last thing sounds so cool!

I'll make no bones, I enjoy the sound of people singing like this. I even like the sound of people talking like this. I also think that this is the best record Carey's been involved with.

But, don't take Dan's word for it, here for yourself:

Songs of Evil is out January 20 on Soft Abuse.