All Is Dream

by

Mercury Rev

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In 1998 Mercury Rev suprised the music world with Deserter's Songs - it was a great album that topped the critic's polls and remained atop my CD pile. The good news is, with perseverance, All Is Dream is an even better, more cohesive record. At first listen All Is Dream did not impress me and on 'Lincoln's Eyes' even repelled me, but by about my fourth listen I was enthralled - I guess the crux of this review is that if you stick with it - the rewards are bountiful. The opener 'The Dark Is Rising' sets the tone of All Is Dream wonderfully, balancing Jonathan Donahue's piano and touchingly inadequate voice against crashing waves of orchestration in an oddly beautiful beginning. 'Chains' is a thrilling song, all purpose and urgency, while 'Nite and Fog' with it's opening couplet "If God moves across the water, then the girl moves in other ways" blows me away every time - more than once during this song has the thought struck me that the Rev are moving on a markedly different plane to other groups. There is a charming naivete to 'Little Rhymes' - it sounds a little inconsequential at first listen, but is in fact quite a moving song far greater than the sum of it's parts; likewise 'You're My Queen' with it's swooning arrangement. For me, listening to All Is Dream is rather like looking at a Dali painting - a surreal experience charged with nightmarish visions and paranoia, but also, and importantly, real beauty.

3 1/2

Although their changing sound would alienate some long-timers, for the most part the orchestral pop that swirls around AID feels like a focused stream of fragile beauty. Yes there are a few duds and the singer certainly milks the vulnerability of his approach a little too closely at points, but when the band's flow aligns with the production properly, there is a surefire cue of musical magic, and while all tracks are certainly not selflessly brilliant as say, Tides of the Moon (ie: the opposite in feel to a clumsy romanticism of the opener), the album comes packed with it's share of MR gems.