Mercury Rev: All Is Dream

The New York psychedelic experimentalists in Mercury Rev have experienced constant evolution over the past 10 years, as they've twisted and turned through increasingly elegant (but mostly underrated) albums, lineup changes, and abundant side projects and offshoots. The group made its greatest commercial and creative breakthrough with 1998's Deserter's Songs, an album so widely acclaimed that it unfairly relegated its three full-length predecessors to footnotes. Creepy, evocative, and painstakingly orchestral, the disc cannily balanced Jonathan Donahue's creaky, off-putting tenor with arrangements that were by turns delicate and bombastic, with welcome doses of theremin to boot. The only problem with Deserter's Songs' is that, for all its beauty and ample hidden pleasures, its lovely obtuseness renders it a bit emotionally inert and distant. Mercury Rev's new All Is Dream possesses so many of its predecessor's strengths and weaknesses that it could serve as Disc 2 for a Deserter's Songs double album. Upping the drama quotient from the word "go"—it lets fly with a crashing crescendo in its first five seconds—All Is Dream is a lot like the dreamy theremin interlude that opens "Nite And Fog": buoyed by swooning grace, but bearing the unmistakable whiff of calculation. Mercury Rev's ongoing foray into a strange sort of beauty overload remains a noble endeavor, but it inspires more admiration than emotional attachment.