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Amazon.co.uk Review
Seven albums in, and Mercury Rev are again on the move. Snowflake Midnight finds New York’s veteran sonic explorers downing the tools that resulted in 2005’s disappointing The Secret Migration and discovering a whole new, largely electronic palette: computers and synthesisers, sequencers and vocoders. Which isn’t to say the Rev have entirely abandoned their familiar brand of heady, cosmic Americana: as "Snowflake in a Hot World" gusts into life on Jonathon Donohue’s optimistic, star-gazing croon, it’s clear that the themes that have long driven this band--nature and mysticism, magic and dreams--remain intact. Now, though, electronics are woven deep in their design. Often it's successful--take the gorgeous "Runaway Raindrop", shimmering electronic minimalism that recalls electronic Krautrock godheads Cluster. Elsewhere, somewhat meandering: see the overblown, seven-minute "Dream of Young Girl As a Flower", which veers unsteadily between serene drift and pounding electronica like Donohue and Grasshopper are still trying to master the instruction manual. But while it might not be a reinvention quite as stark as their panoramic, career-defining 1998 album Deserter's Songs, evolution is preferable to inertia, and seven albums in Mercury Rev are still mutating, following their muse like leaves tossed on the wind. --Louis Pattison
Review
It hardly seems possible that Mercury Rev have been around for the best part of two decades. Even more unlikely that they are still together at all given the constant turmoil and changes of personnel, but here they are, after a four-year silence (their soundtrack for 2006's Bye Bye Blackbird notwithstanding) with their seventh studio album.
A word of warning just to start with: whatever you do, don't, just DON'T, go to the band's website and risk bumping into their seriously off-putting description of their new nine-track offering as ''bursting with patterns and mandala-like forms! blown apart by their own majestic desire to share themselves, spirals of new momentum inter-twingling with the vastness of limitless new creation!''. Or, they could just have said ''Here are nine new, oh, what's the word! songs!''.
Yet for all the self-mythologising and, by the sounds of it, self-diagnosing going on, Snowflake Midnight is, happily, what you'd expect from a slightly older, clearly more mature and possibly even a touch more contented Mercury Rev. It's still meltingly infectious, sparkle-dusted dream pop but noticeably less airy, its centre of gravity a touch lower, its wide-eyed vision dulled at the edges.
So prime yourself for a lapse into maudlin resignation from time to time, as in the crystalline Snowflake In A Hot World, or momentary refuge in the ambient awesomeness of October Sunshine, unquestionably the album's stand-out track.
Immediately noticeable is the retro (and really rather agreeable) emphasis on electronics. The soundscapes encountered here are large and luminous, dotted with manufactured and trademark real details and all underpinned by that signature sense of nostalgic yearning. Occasionally, such eclecticism throws up slightly disturbing (and surely unintended) allusions, as in the case of Dream Of A Young Girl As A Flower, which unsettlingly sounds like early Genesis crossed with Underworld. That can't be good.
But tracks such as the serialist-leaning Runaway Raindrop with its vast cinematic sprawl, the soaring, spiralling spectacular that is Sense On Fire, and the blissful hymnal Faraway From Cars more than make amends and contribute magnificently to Mercury Rev's finest offering since 1998's Deserter's Songs. --Michael Quinn
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Further adventures from a small bright planet.
Mr Donahue and cohorts create an extraordinarily lush and vivid
soundworld for us with their new release 'Snowflake Midnight'.
These nine sumptuous tracks are almost overwhelming in their
multilayered, scintillating, numinous complexity.
Structurally and melodically epic in scope, the densely constructed
thematic and rhythmic waves at times threaten to capsize the craft.
I am wholly willing to drown, however, in music of this imaginative
impetus, originality and quality.
Opening track 'Snowflake In A Hot World' drives along at a furious pace.
Piano, percussion and hard edged guitar supporting the disembodied high floating vocal.
'Butterfly's Wing' is a curiously lilting patchwork quilt of beatbox, crashing keyboard chords
and hauntingly disembodied childrens' voices. A magic garden of sound.
'Sense On Fire', with its slowly building rhythmic pulse and cataclysmic resolution
is a simple and single-minded idea followed through with uncompromising clarity of vision.
'People Are So Unpredictable' takes us into almost ambient territory with its'
delicate tapestry of shifting synth chords. All ice and fire.
The brief instrumental 'October Sunshine' is simply sublime.
'Runnaway Raindrop', 'Faraway From Cars' (with its' ecstatic handclapping) and the quirky
'A Squirrel and I ( Holding On....and Then Letting Go )' all engage our attention, imagination
and admiration.
The glorious 'Dream Of A young Girl As A Flower' is, however, the blooming heart of
this truly wonderful album. An epic composition in every sense. So many ideas jostling
for attention without ever losing focus or coherence for a moment.
Challenging. Uplifting. Thrilling. A Quite Magnificent Achievement.
Essential.
Mr Donahue and cohorts create an extraordinarily lush and vivid
soundworld for us with their new release 'Snowflake Midnight'.
These nine sumptuous tracks are almost overwhelming in their
multilayered, scintillating, numinous complexity.
Structurally and melodically epic in scope, the densely constructed
thematic and rhythmic waves at times threaten to capsize the craft.
I am wholly willing to drown, however, in music of this imaginative
impetus, originality and quality.
Opening track 'Snowflake In A Hot World' drives along at a furious pace.
Piano, percussion and hard edged guitar supporting the disembodied high floating vocal.
'Butterfly's Wing' is a curiously lilting patchwork quilt of beatbox, crashing keyboard chords
and hauntingly disembodied childrens' voices. A magic garden of sound.
'Sense On Fire', with its slowly building rhythmic pulse and cataclysmic resolution
is a simple and single-minded idea followed through with uncompromising clarity of vision.
'People Are So Unpredictable' takes us into almost ambient territory with its'
delicate tapestry of shifting synth chords. All ice and fire.
The brief instrumental 'October Sunshine' is simply sublime.
'Runnaway Raindrop', 'Faraway From Cars' (with its' ecstatic handclapping) and the quirky
'A Squirrel and I ( Holding On....and Then Letting Go )' all engage our attention, imagination
and admiration.
The glorious 'Dream Of A young Girl As A Flower' is, however, the blooming heart of
this truly wonderful album. An epic composition in every sense. So many ideas jostling
for attention without ever losing focus or coherence for a moment.
Challenging. Uplifting. Thrilling. A Quite Magnificent Achievement.
Essential.
Format:Audio CD
If your not a fan and have never bought Mercury Rev before this is the Album to buy.... Put it on your i-pod, go for a walk alone and be amazed. Even as a fan I am blown away with the way the tracks all marry into one, you'll find that track nine will take your breath away and then you will go straight back to track 1 if you've not got back home and walk for another 30 mins.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
i loved this album. from the first listen i was transported to another world and gladly let rev take the reins.
i would suggest listening on an ipod as the music is definately better with full focus not just background noise.
mercury rev are a band with an individual sound, fantastic!
i would suggest listening on an ipod as the music is definately better with full focus not just background noise.
mercury rev are a band with an individual sound, fantastic!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
one to miss...
The "Snowflake Midnight" comes with an accompanying free download, which is marginally worse than "snowflake Midnight". Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2009 by J. C. RHODES
.
Wow, some people have given this 5 stars! Well, let me say; I'm quite pleased about that, though I won't be joining them. Read more
Published on 19 Nov 2008 by Neil
Yet more great stuff from the Revsters.
More superb sounds, songs, ideas, production and loveliness from a superb band. I can't say that this is better than their last album - which also got mixed reviews but IMO is an... Read more
Published on 29 Oct 2008 by jaquesaulait
Definitely a Grower
The negative reviews elsewhere strike me as misguided. This album unfolds like a book, taking you through textures and sounds. Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2008 by L. N. Nixon
Consider This Only Half the Experience
I loved Deserter's Songs and All is Dream, but I couldn't get into Secret Migration at all, therefore I was quite hesitant about buying this as I too thought they had lost their... Read more
Published on 23 Oct 2008 by The Psychedelic Goth
Keep Listening
Don't listen too closely to the above reviews. I am also a huge M.Rev fan and was nervous about buying this release. Read more
Published on 10 Oct 2008 by Mr. R. L. Blair
big let down
An extreme dissapointment from a band I've loved for years. They've gone for lush ambient sounds this time with echoey vocals on top that float aimlessly around and get nowhere. Read more
Published on 4 Oct 2008 by Ben Grimm76
Heartbreaking...
I've been a huge fan of Mercury Rev since their initial incarnation and the phenominal 'Yerself Is Steam' album. Read more
Published on 29 Sep 2008 by M. Payne
Second poor album in a row for once-great psych rockers
`Snowflake Midnight` is a departure from previous Mercury Rev records in that it is almost entirely dominated by electronics and glacial synths. Read more
Published on 26 Sep 2008 by Demob Happy
Foot off the Revs ?
Mercury Rev have been around long enough to have acquired a devoted and faithful following which appears to be more strongly rooted in the UK than their native US. Read more
Published on 26 Sep 2008 by Arthur Dooley
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