Mercury Rev's All Is Dream claims its share of pop brilliance by taking up this position with enormous reserves of intelligence, grace, and emotion. As long-time Rev flautist Suzanne Thorpe-- who's been with the band since their sprawling psych-noise days-- has been demoted to the orchestra pit for this release, the band is now all-male. With Dave Fridmann mainly taking the role of expert producer and making contributions on bass and mellotron and Jimy Chambers passing the sticks on to new drummer Jeff Mercel, the core group is possibly the most stripped-down line-up in Mercury Rev's year recording history.
Though their approach hasn't changed from the radically orchestral turn of 's Deserter's Songs , these songs are far more personal than their last set. Even when bathed in Jonathan Donahue's constant wash of fever-dream lyrics, it's clear that these are Mercury Rev's first real though predictably odd love songs. Throughout the album, Donahue takes the concept of woman as the proverbial "other" to an almost illogical extreme, funneling oceans of uncertainty into a female form and turning these emotions out again into uncomfortable reflections on death, fate, and all of those other nasty things.
The music, of course, is by no means as unstable as the lyrics. Where the band seemed a bit more easygoing and loose in their explorations of the orchestral-pop form on Deserter's Songs , All is Dream takes the band's newfound preoccupations in a definite direction.
This makes the music sound a bit overdetermined at times most notably, the opening track's calculated symphonic swells , but for the most part, their grasp of the sound has improved. Email Password Remember Me Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign up! Tags s s Mercury Rev. Signed Copy News.
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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. The first half of All Is Dream journeys through the group'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. Perhaps most exciting for die-hard fans are the B-sides, outtakes, and other studio rarities. Nearly twice as long as the album itself, this part of the reissue includes illuminating covers of the classic country song "Streets of Laredo" and Irving Berlin 's "Blue Skies" which sounds like it could be from a lost Muppet movie that celebrate Mercury Rev 's love of songcraft at its finest.
Their version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is almost uncanny, yet they do an even more striking Beatles impression on the outtake "Back into the Sun You're the One. Moonlight Will Come" are all standouts, though considerably lighter in mood than the final album. A session for the French radio station France Inter and highlights from the All Is Dream tour -- including a rousing cover of David Bowie 's "Jean Genie" -- round out the set, which gives a complete portrait of Mercury Rev at the time and is a must for any fan.
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