What The Critics Say
Mercury Rev are as at one with nature as ever on Snowflake Midnight, an album whose title reflects its delicately frosty electronics and late-night meditations perfectly. Jonathan Donahue is still an unabashed romantic, empathizing with a snowflake's plight on the album opener "Snowflake in a Hot World," finding deeper meaning in its fleeting beauty and individuality. Even though its exclamations ("You're not the same!") are a little over the top, the wide-eyed lyricism the band attempted on Secret Migration finds more focus and restraint on this song and throughout Snowflake Midnight. Instead of piling on more and more sounds and sentimental lyrics like they did with their previous album, here Mercury Rev simplify and let the music suggest moods, rather than making it too obvious how these songs should make listeners feel. "October Sunshine"'s Eno-esque synth washes capture a waning sunbeam so clearly you can almost see the dust particles hovering in it, and though "Senses on Fire" is little more than the title repeated over and over while beats and riffs surge and float, its in-the-moment joy makes it one of Snowflake Midnight's brightest highlights. A more minimal Mercury Rev is still pretty widescreen, though: "Butterfly's Wing" layers fluttery textures, masses of vocal harmonies, and children's laughter into something as majestic yet personal as anything on All Is Dream or Deserter's Songs. However, there are only a handful of epics on Snowflake Midnight, including the nearly eight-minute "Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower," which moves from dark electronics and to vibrant rock like night into day. While there are few stumbles -- "People Are So Unpredictable (There's No Bliss Like Home)" gets dangerously close to being overblown, and "Runaway Raindrop"'s oddly gurgling bass distracts from the rest of the track -- as a whole, Snowflake Midnight works as a soothing, gently inspiring song cycle, the likes of which Mercury Rev hasn't made since See You on the Other Side. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Hello Blackbird'
What The Critics Say
Moody, majestic, and unpredictable, All Is Dream plays like Deserter's Songs' evil twin, polarizing that album's gently trippy, symphonic pop into paranoid and exuberant extremes that range from the eerie lullaby "Lincoln's Eyes" to the giddy show-tune-in-search-of-a-musical "A Drop in Time." Starting with the symphonic grandeur of "The Dark Is Rising," the album's ambitious, self-indulgent vibe recalls '60s and '70s psych and prog rock concept albums as well as the band's own expansive body of work. The first half of All Is Dream journeys through the band's dark side with songs like the brooding "Tides of the Moon," which pits Jonathan Donahue's spooked, singsong vocals against appropriately unearthly theremins, glockenspiels, and organs, while the second half's "Nite and Fog" and "Little Rhymes" sound twice as sunny compared to the preceding weirdness. The contrast between the album's halves is so sharp that it seems designed for vinyl; flipping this record over would be immensely satisfying. Though nothing on All Is Dream is as immediate as Deserter's Songs' "Goddess on a Hiway" or "Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp," this album may be stronger as a whole, moving gracefully from singer/songwriter ballads like the beautiful "Spiders and Flies" to guitar-driven epics like "You're My Queen" and "Hercules." An unfashionably self-indulgent and earnest album, All Is Dream certainly isn't for everyone, and may not even be for some Mercury Rev fans, but in its own personal, insular way, it's another triumph for the band. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Four albums in and Mercury Rev remain as surprising and daring as ever -- exchanging the volcanic noise and twisted sensibilities of earlier releases for ornate arrangements and ethereal strings, Deserter's Songs unlocks the beauty always hidden just below the band's surface, its lush harmonics and soothing textures bathing in an almost unearthly light. Standouts including the exquisitely waltz-like "Tonite It Shows" and the celestial "Endlessly" are like lullabies, their music-box melodies gentle and narcotic; even the most pop-oriented moments like "Opus 40" and "Hudson Line" share a symphonic, candy-colored majesty far removed from conventional rock idioms. Complete with its fractured instrumental interludes and odd effects, Deserter's Songs sounds like no other album -- for that matter, it doesn't even sound like Mercury Rev, yet there's no mistaking the record's brilliance for anyone else. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
'See You on the Other Side'
What The Critics Say
After David Baker left the group for weirder pastures, the rest of Mercury Rev returned with See You on the Other Side, an album very much in the group's expansive, experimental tradition, yet distinct from its work with Baker. The sprawling compositions, elaborate arrangements, and jazzy leanings Mercury Rev perfected on Boces return on See You on the Other Side, as exemplified by the opening track, "Empire State (Son House in Excelsis)." But without Baker's merry prankster vocals, the album feels a bit unbalanced, as though the group was still adjusting to making music without him when the album was recorded. The lean, tense "Young Man's Stride" could've had even more impact had Baker sung it but, for the most part, Jonathan Donahue handles all the vocal duties ably, swinging the group toward its gently whimsical side in the process. The brilliant single "Everlasting Arm" sweetly deconstructs Pet Sounds-style pop years before that became one of indie rock's dominant styles, while "A Kiss From an Old Flame (A Trip to the Moon)" lives up to its title with giddy, swirling flutes and otherworldly backing vocals. Dreamy, yearning songs like "Sudden Ray of Hope" and "Racing the Tide" revel in the unabashed prettiness that Mercury Rev used to hide under layers of freaked-out guitars, and "Peaceful Night," the group's quirky take on Tin Pan Alley songwriting, proves that they weren't getting less inventive as time went on, they were just getting subtler about it. See You on the Other Side's relatively short length adds to its rather unfair middle-child status, but it pointed the way toward Mercury Rev's breakthrough with Deserter's Songs, and is a completely charming -- if underrated -- album in its own right. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
With Boces, Mercury Rev took everything that made Yerself Is Steam such an impressive debut and made their second album even more so. Over the course of ten minutes, opening epic "Meth of a Rockette's Kick" moves from dreamy musing to guitar-fueled crests -- and throws in flutes, harps, a brass section, and a choir for good measure -- announcing that the group is at the height of its powers. Thrashy freakouts like "Trickle Down" sound even more explosive and stand in sharper contrast to the Technicolor pop of "Something for Joey" and "Hi Speed Boats," while the sweetly lovelorn "Bronx Cheer" and "Downs Are Feminine Balloons" (key lyric: "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's up") reveal the vulnerability beneath the group's jet-powered guitars. But Boces doesn't just perfect the sound Mercury Rev pioneered on Yerself Is Steam, it expands it in predictably unpredictable ways. The Cheshire cat jazz-pop of "Boys Peel Out," the sleepwalking speed metal of "Snorry Mouth," and the spooky, smoky finale "Girlfren," though very different from each other, are equally captivating examples of the band's witty, innovative modus operandi. Mercury Rev never released another album as joyfully, unselfconsciously creative as Boces; after chief weirdo David Baker departed, the band pursued other fascinating directions, but this album remains one of the highest points of its career. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Music dictated not by logic but by intuition, Yerself Is Steam is an album at war with itself, split by its desire to achieve both melodic pop bliss and white-noise transcendence within the same space; it succeeds brilliantly, avant-bubblegum fuel injected by fits and flourishes of prismatic chaos. From the comic malevolence of David Baker's mad-scientist creations to Jonathan Donahue's opiate lullabies, Yerself Is Steam is vividly cinematic -- between the roller coaster feedback of "Coney Island Cyclone" and the narcoleptic ebb and flow of the climactic "Very Sleepy Rivers," the songs perfectly evoke their titular aspirations; likewise, from the album title (say it out loud) onward, the lyrics revel in the quirks and idiosyncrasies of language, buoyed by a homophonous prankishness and dada rhyme schemes, which, in their own odd way, suggest a kind of poetry. A near-perfect debut from a band that would only get better from here on out. [The American edition appends the superb single "Car Wash Hair," while some foreign releases include the bonus disc Lego My Ego, a crazy quilt knitted together from unlikely covers (Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay," Miles Davis' "Shhh/Peaceful"), Peel Sessions highlights, and wonderfully loopy studio chatter.] ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
