Mercury Rev - All is Dream
(V2)
Mercury Rev were once a band who it seemed were content to create and destroy entire worlds of sound around them in the name of groovy chaos. Having flirted for quite some time with the British press, they finally became the band du jour with Deserter's Songs, thus ending their career as innovative savants, apparently. Is this the same band who once shot a video featuring porn star Ron Jeremy flying around through space naked, save a few well placed spinning stars? Is this the band that brought a gaggle of kids dressed as bumble bees onstage for Lollapalooza? Featured flautist Suzanne Thorpe? Having shed their image as druggy fuck ups and won the hearts of our beloved Brits, the Mercury Rev of today is a far different beast.
All is Dream is not the album I expected from this band, though perhaps I was kidding myself. This is not the band who delighted in capturing innocence and perversion so well in their early incarnation nor is it the band that created the haunting work that was Deserter's Songs, though by that point they were well on their way to what they've become. No, having captured the hearts of our British friends, they have given up the scrappiness of their past and become a REAL BAND. Professional, even. With this professional ethos, of course, comes a responsibility to the fans, the media, the critics, etc. So, instead of building on the creaky empty house beauty of their last album, All is Dream merely seems an attempt at recapturing it. All the ingredients are here--orchestral arrangements, the melancholic warble of Jonathan Donohue's singing, spacey female choruses, and the delicate yet bombastic song structures that have always been a trademark of this band. So why doesn't it work? Perhaps it's due to the fact that the whole album just seems like Deserter's Songs 2: Electric Boogaloo. This record does have its moments, though they are pretty few and far between and generally a poor facsimile at best.
I think I can pretty much sum up All is Dream like this--many people I know listened to Deserter's Songs and thought it was a bunch of ridiculous, pompous nonsense. I fought with them and argued with them for hours that it was in fact a work of great beauty. I can't argue with them this time.
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