Having long
ago shaken most of the Flaming Lips comparisons, Mercury Rev's back-to-back
salvo of Deserter's Songs (1998) and All Is Dream (2001) remains an
impeccable A-side/B-side demonstration of how to turn a grandiose studio vision
into something beautiful, then slightly harrowing. But 2005's The Secret
Migration
lost the grandeur amid weightless burbling, and the new Snowflake Midnight integrates all kinds of
gimmickry good for press releases: Random-note generators and avant-garde
patches punctuate the songs. The best is "People Are So Unpredictable," in
which Jonathan Donahue's faux-naïve worldview is given grit by fierce backing: As
he sings the title, pummeling drums accentuate it. That sense of drama is
missing from the rest of the disc, which indulges in fussed-over backgrounds
full of glitchy adornments, similarly admirable in their complex arrangements,
but absolutely weightless. (An ill-advised spoken-word segment on "Runaway
Raindrop" doesn't help, either.) At its best, Mercury Rev is secretly an
Americana band (see Levon Helm and Garth Hudson's appearances on Deserter's
Songs),
tricking out solid songs with studio know-how; their collapse into catchall
experimentation is brave, but ultimately not the best route.