Indie favorite Mercury Rev to strip down in Tel Aviv

“We would like to invite you to our intimate acoustic performance accompanied by piano and mellotron and featuring stories and songs behind music we’ve recorded," the band wrote.

 MERCURY REV’S Grasshopper (left) and Jonathan Donahue.  (photo credit: MICHAEL BLOOM)
MERCURY REV’S Grasshopper (left) and Jonathan Donahue.
(photo credit: MICHAEL BLOOM)

Mercury Rev is returning to Israel for the fifth time in November, as headliners of Piano Festival in Tel Aviv.

The band – founded in 1989 in Buffalo, New York, by childhood friends, multi-instrumentalist Sean “Grasshopper” Mackowiak and Jonathan Donahue – has long been a purveyor of captivating melodies drenched in layers of mood-inducing psychedelic washes of sound.

This time, it’ll be turning down the volume and performing an acoustic show titled “Whisper and Strum.”

The band's message

“We would like to invite you to our intimate acoustic performance accompanied by piano and mellotron and featuring stories and songs behind music we’ve recorded and music we’ve revered through almost 40 years together,” the band wrote.

 Band members playing on stage (stock photo). (credit: CREATIVE COMMONS)
Band members playing on stage (stock photo). (credit: CREATIVE COMMONS)

“This will be our fifth adventure in Israel, and we are truly looking forward to perform many of these songs in the ‘late night/whispering way’ they were once born. Fragile, naked, and wide-eyed. Just like us.

“Your friends: Jonathan and Grasshopper.”

The show will take place at the Tel Aviv Museum on November 2. Tickets are available at https://www.zappa-club.co.il