Snowflake Midnight

We Say...

Review by Chris Roberts

Mercury Rev’s extraordinary career has seen them mutate from the screaming, formative psychedelic pop of their 1991 debut Yerself Is Steam through their 1998 country-meets-cosmic-rock reinvention Deserters’ Songs to a position on the critical landscape just marginally less revered than old friends and allies Flaming Lips. If their last album, The Secret Migration, suggested they may be resting on their laurels, honing their (once incendiary, now sweet) sound but treading water, this mind-blowing masterpiece propels them once again into the vanguard of inventive and inspiring modern music. With a dazzling range, a penchant for mixing genres and an ability to find sinews of soul in every emotive twist and turn, Mercury Rev have, with Snowflake Midnight made their defining album.

They break every rule during its course, leaping from lazy and introspective to flamboyant and flashy. They embrace, for the first time, pulsing electronica and are flush with punkish energy, yet the overall feel is closer to unfashionable '70s landmarks like Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon or even (whisper it) Yes’ Relayer. While Jonathan Donahue’s finely cracked falsetto brings to mind Neil Young, Grasshopper’s guitars and keyboards and Jeff Mercel’s random Eno-esque experimentation slide into areas previously explored by Philip Glass or Michael Nyman. Snowflake Midnight takes you on one heavenly long-distance journey, with every station a surprise, every view awe-inspiring.

Songs then morph fluidly from one state of being to another. “People Are So Unpredictable” pulls off their patented trick of rendering hippie platitudes transcendent again, and for good measure throws in breaths and big bangs which mirror the album's big themes: birth, love, war, escape, death. “Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower" is childlike and charming. “Runaway Raindrop” and “Faraway Cars” yearn for a carefree, post-coital nirvana: the album is all about rising above the mundane, the everyday. It certainly does that itself.

This is the one Mercury Rev fans have always believed was possible. The band somehow render familiar Americana tropes avant-garde, make what could be indulgent experimentation resonant and articulate and have crafted an album that’s a new personal best.