"Never take love for granted." That is one of many hard-won missives buried on Detroit singer-songwriter Stewart Francke's fifth album. It comes during "Letter From Ten Green," a song-poem from Francke, who lay in a cancer ward bed at the time, to his kids in the event of his death. A little girl on his floor had died that night, and the song is Francke's raw response to that moment and to the foul deal the fates had dealt him. That theme runs through the whole of the album. Usually I'm suspicious of art borne so specifically of personal tragedy, since it too often has the staying power of a soggy fortune cookie. But "Swimming in Mercury" is that rare work in which one person's crisis translates to an experience we all benefit from - I’m thinking of Lou Reed's "Magic and Loss," Beth Nielsen Chapman's "Sand and Water" and Jackson Browne's "For a Dancer" here. The opening song, "Keep Your Faith, Darling" is one of those impossibly uplifting gospel-folk raves that levitates from the opening chord on. Francke sings like Brian Wilson (or Ron Sexsmith), writes with a poker-faced wisdom of a survivor and rocks with the same gigantic heart that powered Lance Armstrong to Paris last year. The final life-lesson we from "Ten Green" is, "Believe in other people; they're god more often than not." Stewart Francke, these 11 songs and whatever else he does next-no matter what else he does next-is testament to as much. -Jim Walsh - St. Paul Pioneer Press ~ January 9, 2000