(TV) Darkside of the Marquee Moon: Mercury Rev and Television

["Russ Van Rooy" <russvr@blarg.net>]

There will be a little Television content in this post so I won't put OT in
the subject line even though this is mostly about Mercury Rev. So I actually
got into Mercury Rev because I read somewhere, maybe it was Mojo or maybe
CMJ, that the main guitar guy in Mercury Rev , "Grasshopper", was a big
Television fan and was influenced by Verlaine. From my listening to this
band I would agree. SO as I write, I am listening to MRs latest "All is
Dream", and people it is great ! Can you say "Darkside of the Marquee Moon"
? Yeah I think it approaches that kind if greatness. The singer is no David
Gilmour though, more like a cross between Neil Young and J. Mascis . Here is
the sonicnet review.
-Russ
==============================================================

All Is Dream, Mercury Rev
(V2)


Call It Sleep

By Ann Abel

Over the past decade, each magical Mercury Rev album has out-shimmered the
one before it. Ever since the band's 1991 debut, Yerself Is Steam - a
daydreamy cloud of psychedelic melodies pierced by spikes of distorted
guitar - critics have slavered (if the record-buying public has failed to
notice) and praise has been heaped. Comparisons have been made to Pavement,
the Velvet Underground, Dinosaur Jr., the Flaming Lips (a band
singer/guitarist Jonathan Donahue was once part of), the Beach Boys, My
Bloody Valentine, Syd Barrett, Van Dyke Parks, even Henry Mancini. By the
time of 1998's majestic Deserter's Songs, the group had changed labels and
lineups, jettisoning much of the noise and reveling in tuneful, crystalline
art-pop. This is music from a sparkling planet, far over the rainbow.





All Is Dream, Mercury Rev's fifth album, continues in the bucolic vein of
Deserter's Songs, and sounds almost as wondrous. Drifting rather than
rocking, the 10 songs are lunatic symphonies for angels to dance to on the
heads of pins. All Is Dream glimmers with Sean "Grasshopper" Mackowiak's
"moth light" guitar and space-age loops and effects. Bassist Dave Fridmann,
drummer/pianist Jeff Mercel and guests employ unusual instruments like the
Mellotron flute and bowed saw, which sounds eerily like a female voice. The
old-time touches feel not retro but otherworldly; this is music from a
sparkling planet, somewhere far over the rainbow.


The effect is cinematic, like the soundtrack to some drugged-out movie
musical. It's not hard to imagine Busby Berkeley-style choreography as
Donahue floats his childlike tenor over the grandiose orchestral fillips of
"A Drop in Time" (RealAudio excerpt): "Let the music play like you want it
to/ Let the sunshine light in your hair/ Let the moonlight play at your feet
like a babe/ And softly linger there." These (failed-)love songs drip whimsy
without being cloying, thanks in part to lyrics that temper the pastoral
scenes with vampires, amoebas and sharks. Though "A Drop in Time" seems
jovial, its verses undergo a subtle, tense shift that transforms "the female
form in my bed" into a melancholy-tinged memory. And the buoyant melody of
"Nite and Fog" (RealAudio excerpt) belies its wandering, hopeless sentiment.
"I tried to guide my love by starlight/ And soon my life became a maze/
Osiris and Orion were your favorites/ Night and fog are my days," laments
Donahue, to the strains of almost unbearably light, string-filled pop.


But don't go trying to deconstruct it. Mercury Rev haven't lost their
penchant for obscurity, and the images rarely form coherent pictures.
Instead, just trust the final lines of "Hercules" (RealAudio excerpt), the
swirling, eight-minute epic that closes the album: "All is one/ All is mind/
All is lost and you find/ All is dream" - one you shouldn't be in any hurry
to wake up from.
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