When I read that The Prayer Chain was doing a 30th anniversary show for Mercury this summer, I wanted to do something to honor the album, the band, and the impact it’s had on me.

I first heard Mercury in college—driving across campus, twisted up and exhilarated by the experimental edge and emotional depth of a band I’d followed since high school.

Not long after, I saw them live in Bartlesville: incense, droning guitars, swirling imagery projected on a sheet behind the band. I was entranced. And it stayed with me.

The feedback loops, the tension, the Middle Eastern rhythms—it’s never stopped echoing.

Kate Smith once wrote that Mercury is “beautiful, unnerving, exhausting, and cathartic”—which feels true of the album, and maybe of life itself.

Thirty years later, it still resonates.