CD release w/ The Wednesday Night Heroes and The City Streets, Fri, Feb 24, New City (10081 Jasper Ave.), Info: 429-2582

There was a giant Clash poster on the wall. It was a stark, high-contrast, black and white photo of the seminal ’70s punk band at the peak of its game–probably a promo shot taken just a few days after the release of London Calling, the album that made punk music not only a fully accomplished style, but also the album that made punk immensely popular.

The walls were padded with blue mats, the kind movers use to protect the furniture with. Foam lined the doorframes.

The room was a swampy nest of buzzing amplifiers, with the Fender Rhodes electric piano slowly warming up, its innards groaning as they came back to life.

The basement was lit by a single lamp. The light bulb in the ceiling had burned out a long time ago.

The buzzing grew louder until it was joined by the rumbling sounds of the snare drum John Watson was whipping up into a frenzy.

Our Mercury suddenly broke into "Spirits Up." The rollicking punk number seemed to jump straight out of The Clash’s catalogue. Daniel Laxer’s fingers danced all over his bass as he flailed his instrument around as if it were weightless. This was punk–true as can be–Ben Stevenson’s voice a raspy shout into the microphone, his guitar chopping the air with invisible claws. But as soon as Eric Budd’s fingers touched the Rhodes’ keys for the song’s anthemic chorus, the whole room shifted upside down and the groove went straight for your heart... and your shoes.

That kind of basement-bred soul power is the very essence of Our Mercury, the kind of fiercely passionate and immediately accessible sense of feverish revolt urging the body and mind to react. A true call to arms for the individual to awake from the deep, one that grew within the four padded concrete walls of a house in the inner city.

THE BASEMENT’S CALLING

"That album was made in this house, the songs were written in the basement of this place," says Ben Stevenson. "It was a dank, smelly cave in the basement–there were mushrooms growing on the walls. The name From Below has different correlations, and that’s one of the major ones. It came from this hole in the basement."

To witness the four band mates hard at work, confined in a space no larger than two minivans, was to understand where their album, From Below, originated from, not because of the obvious, but more importantly because of the spirit of the band, its history, and its evolution.

"It calls to our underground upbringing–not that our parents were punks or anything–as well as coming from the depths of our souls," explains a serious Stevenson. "That’s what this record has come out of. It’s coming to the realization that if you don’t do it from the pit of your heart, then there’s no point."

From Below certainly has a life–and a heart–of its own. Neatly avoiding the pitfalls of the punk genre, and not willing to brush aside any of its influences, From Below is a record drinking from the fountain of youth.

With Budd’s recent addition to the roster, Our Mercury have distilled the essence of their personal wonder years into a vintage-tinged album gushing with the energy of late ’70s punk, adding subtle touches of reggae, hip hop, and soul into the mix–something their childhood heroes in The Clash mastered well over 25 years before them.

"In the last few years, it was about getting back into them and appreciating them through a new perspective," says Stevenson. "It was the same exciting sound as when I was young, but there was a deeper attachment to it. On this record, it was a return to the simplicity and the more in-your-face approach to writing a song, where it says what it has to say front to back.

"I think it was conscious, somewhat. The first song we ever played as Misdemeanor was ‘White Riot.’ Back then they were what got me into punk. That was it."

Our Mercury’s origins stretch back to when Watson and Stevenson were just in grade school in the 1980s, back to a time when Misdemeanor (the band that was to become Our Mercury) was just a concept in two "punk" kids’ heads. That story also ties in with the themes expressed on the record, and with its defiantly boisterous DIY overtones.

"That’s where we came from," recalls Watson. "I never even really dressed up like a punk. Maybe I tucked my army pants into my combat boots once or twice but that wasn’t what it was really about. You go to a school, for instance, and you look around you and you see a lot of people who are pretty insecure and a lot of people who try to be like everyone else. They just try to fit in, right? When we were in school we were doing something different, and that’s what punk really was to me. I think it just comes from where we were when we were young."

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

A couple EPs and a few years later, in 2001, Misdemeanor left Edmonton for Montreal, a move they hoped would be conducive to furthering the band’s career. It turned out to be a positive experience, albeit one that didn’t necessarily lead the band where it originally thought it would go.

Stevenson and Watson both agree it was the right thing to do, but that it didn’t add up to being the most rewarding for the band. They couldn’t find a decent practice studio, were forced to share a dirty old space filled with the acrid smell of burnt coffee and accumulated mold, and even looked into buying their own house with a private basement to work in, to no avail. In the end, the decision to come back home had more to do with the band’s best interests than a general sense of failure.

"We weren’t writing nearly as many songs out there," sums up Stevenson. "We didn’t really think it was a failure. I wasn’t ashamed to come back. Anyone who thought it was anything like that obviously doesn’t know us."

"You also realize how shallow things can be in a big city," admits Watson, as he relives the experience in his mind. "People don’t really think about that, but it’s true. In Edmonton, we don’t get distracted–we do our own thing. No one here expects to be popular. If they do, they’re completely deluding themselves."

Thus, with no real great expectations the band re-emerged as Our Mercury. They soldiered on as a three-piece, as energetic as ever, releasing a few tracks here and there until they were approached after a concert by Rob Krause of Winnipeg’s Smallman Records. Smallman wanted Our Mercury. The process took time, stretching over a period of almost three years.

"Other than our EP [2003’s Your Medicine], they had no idea what our record was going to sound like until they actually got it," says Watson. "We’d sent them this crap demo."

"I don’t think they even listened to it," interjects Stevenson.

"If they did, they must’ve swallowed their hearts," continues Watson. "It made sense to us because we knew what it really sounded like already. But they had no idea."

MERCURY ANSWERING

Stevenson promised Smallman the record was "going to be huge." Recruiting Eric Budd over the summer of 2005 to lay down some keyboard tracks, Our Mercury decided to make him an official part of the band later that fall.

They had finally emerged from below.

And the album, as promised, is huge. Stevenson’s vocals rip through his songs with an energy not unlike Joe Strummer’s or Kurt Cobain’s (another avowed influence from their formative years), lyrics filled with a sense of upbeat idealistic anger aiming to shake things up properly. Laxer’s bass is all over the album, walking, dancing, and binding the sound together. Watson pounds away, providing the backbone to a series of subtly complex, tight-knit songs that run the gamut from the infectiously danceable ("Shawna Don’t Wanna"), to the mind-boggling, Trojan-era reggae shakedown ("Modern Case"), and the soul-infused nightcap topping everything off ("Night of the Year"). When he’s not fulfilling his second guitar duties, Budd’s keys make the more straight-ahead rockers (punk or otherwise) out of this world ("Nothing You Say," "Bad Magic," and the self-referencing "The Basement’s Calling").

To say that they’ve caught up with everyone’s high expectations is quite an understatement, and although Our Mercury tend to brush those expectations aside rather flatly, one can easily see why they sport the grins they do. They’ve made one of the best records to come out of this city–ever.

"I get embarrassed by things like that," admits a humbled Stevenson. "I really appreciate when someone comes up to me and tells me that a certain song connected with them or that our band means something to them. That’s all I need. If you’re playing in front of a few hundred people who don’t give a shit, you might as well be playing for five who do.

"Writing the lyrics of this record I think I definitely had in mind not necessarily a theme or a concept, but a sort of mentality that I wanted to keep in the songs. If people notice that, it’s great. If they feel that themselves, it means that it worked."

To semi-quote their motor-driven "Down In the Orange Light," it’s not over, they won’t back off, the answer’s all theirs. Get out of the way.