In Craig Werner's wonderful book A Change is Gonna Come, he writes about the gospel impulse, "the belief that life's burdens can be transformed into hope, salvation, the promise of redemption." Stewart Francke's "Swimming in Mercury" is no gospel album, but Francke's musical response to his own year of personal hell and redemption is currently Exhibit A in making the case that the impulse isn't tied down to the genre from which it gets its name. That he was able to transform his experience into music isn't unusual. That he was able to transform it into music so strikingly powerful and timeless is. "For Want of a Nail" could have been just a cliched rumination on how great events can turn on trivial happenings. Francke turns it into something anthemic, with a gospel-tinged chorus that repeats the line "love's falling down on everybody" with a Pentecostal fervor so high you can feel it drenching your skin. It's a level of emotional intensity he reaches often on Swimming in Mercury, sonic proof that he follows the directions he tells us he gave his kids: "Live with all your guts and soul and heart, every day." "Letter From Ten Green" deals with death most directly, but it's the most hopeful song on the album, recounting the 4 a.m. news that a little girl in his hospital floor has died. He turns his fear, rage, and confusion into the energy to write a manifesto to his children, one that sums up all of Swimming in Mercury's themes. By the time the album ends with Francke's triumphant promise to himself and those he loves that he'll walk out of the Valley of the Shadow, he's reached out and touched our sense of mortality, our incorrigible spirit, our soul's interconnectedness with all the other souls around us. In other words, he takes us to places that it's easy to forget we've all got to go, and in the process heightens our appreciation for where we are. (Blue Boundary) -Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Madison Daily Leader