High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Deserter`s Songs is the fourth studio album by the Buffalo, New York-based rock band Mercury Rev, released in late September 1998. British music magazine NME named Deserter`s Songs album of the year for 1998. Limited edition copies of the album came in a brown cardboard envelope-like package, with a stamp on the cover postmarked with the release date, as well as two art postcards.