Arcy Drive, mercury

media release: mercury, the rising alt-rock project architected by Nashville artist Maddie Kerr, will kick off a fall North American tour supporting Arcy Drive tonight with a hometown show at Basement East. Stripping down her wall-of-sound post-rock sonics for hypnotizing acoustic iterations, mercury will stop in 17 cities across the US and Canada this autumn, with numerous dates already sold out and many others fast on their way. 

The tour coincides with the digital streaming premiere of mercury's Live from Blackbird Studio session – a four-song live recording taped at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, TN late last year. The session features four original songs of mercury's, including the entirety of her sprawling 2024 EP and short film “Together We Are One, You And I.” 

Earlier this summer, mercury released her latest song “Justin's Headed Out”; a tender alt-rock track about the ordinary minutiae of adolescence that makes you feel alive. The single marked her latest collaboration with Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Snail Mail), a kindred recording partner for mercury's frontperson Maddie Kerr with whom she teamed up with for Together We Are One, You And I, the late-2024 trilogy of songs called Swarm The Hive Mind, and the propulsive single “Faster” released earlier this year. “Justin's Headed Out” is about freedom, love, friendship,” adds mercury's Maddie Kerr. “It's about what it feels like to finally pull yourself out of a hard place and celebrate being alive.”

“Justin's Headed Out” together build upon a sonic era for mercury that first began with Together We Are One, You And I last summer and continued with her most recent Swarm The Hive Mind EP late last year – a pair of releases that she made in collaboration with Farrar at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, NC. The latter of which, a three-track project comprised of “Swarm The Hive Mind,” “The Fly,” and “What You Want Me To Say,” started off as the #1 most-added EP at college radio, peaked at #8 on NACC charts and has been played by stations countrywide like Sirius XMU, FLOOD FM, KEXP (Seattle), KUTX (Austin), KITS (San Francisco), WNYU (New York). 

mercury's arrival has made serious noise since the release of a pair of singles in “Trying” and “Woolgathering” in late 2023 – with attention pouring in from the likes of Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, Nylon, Office Magazine, Brooklyn Vegan, FLOOD Magazine, Kerrang!, Under The Radar, Billboard, Northern Transmissions, Ones To Watch, FLOODFM and Guitar World, who hailed her songwriting as “dark subject matter with visceral abandon and a universe of evocative tones.” For her, songwriting is a form of survival, a means of finding clarity in an often cruel world. It's everything Kerr has known dating back to the day 22 years ago when Mazzy Star's “Fade Into You” blasted as she was born.