Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Trey Anastasio embarked on a handful of solo acoustic tours, and once he eased back into solo performance in 2021, he also played alone, armed only with an acoustic guitar. Given this, it's not entirely surprising that he made an album like Mercy, a record consisting of nothing but Anastasio alone with his acoustics. The description makes Mercy sound relatively straightforward, and compared to such previous loose-limbed solo endeavors as The Horseshoe Curve, it is. He doesn't limit himself to strumming his six-string, however. There are intricate, delicate overdubs and doubling that give Mercy a shimmering bit of depth, especially as they're intertwined with direct plucking and glistening chords. Anastasio spends the majority of the album in a ruminative mood, contemplating the changes wrought by the pandemic, both within himself and within society. As far as the vibe goes, it is very much a quarantine album: a record about isolation made within isolation, one that telegraphs its loneliness in its spare sound. It's so much about feel that the songs sometimes seem a bit vaporous, yet Anastasio does strategically pepper Mercy with a couple of zippier tunes -- the optimistic "Flying Blind" and the muted strut of "Hey Stranger" arrive nearly at the same point on their respective sides -- so it doesn't play like it's wallowing in melancholy. Rather, it's akin to a guided meditation: it's sweet and restorative.