Mercury Rev's All Is Dream

"The best things in life are worth working for", so goes the platitude. This adage holds true for my appreciation of Mercury Rev's 2001 opus, All is Dream, the superior follow up to 1998's feted Deserter's Songs.It is an album that lacks immediacy. It has all the traits of an odious personality; it takes itself very seriously, is prone to outbursts of outrageous feyness (songs about spiders and flies), seems unaware of anything other than itself, and definitely has no sense of humour or irony.
      It is, however, wonderful. Sometimes there is nothing like unabashed sincerity, and ambition. Dave Fridmann (the alt rock Phil Spector) has his trademark lush production arrangements all over proceedings. Creating swelling operatic waves that suit Donaghue's existential melodramas perfectly.
           The music is unequivocally mystical. Very deliberately so. It functions as a concept album whereby the only escape from a defunct world is into that of dreams, of love. It is a near Blakean vision with the Sun and the Moon, and phrases like 'life's mystery' abounding. I know. So far, so prog. But it is so convincing and done with such fervour and earnestness, that you cannot help but lose yourself in the swath of mellotron, flute, strings and Jonathan Donaghue's plangent falsetto. Spend enough time with this record and one is forced to take the plunge into that mythical world, too.

                                                                                                                                                                                   Fate, and loves vicissitudes orbit around these songs whilst a melancholy acceptance of change persists. But beneath these cliches lies an appreciation for all the world, animals, elements and their 'natural harmony'. This is the revelation that "Night and Fog" arrives upon, that everything must have its place, "spiders want corners, vampires want darkness." But then the human element disrupts, the "you" who wants it all, makes a darkness of daytime. Love has the power to upset this harmony. Humans have. Thus the dichotomy of an idealised nature vs reality is presented. 'Drop In Time' sees 'a year' unable to touch the 'perfect form in my bed'. The bed is significant as it represents both love, and slumber, both means of inoculating oneself from reality, and time. Other, narcotic means of escape are presented in 'Little Rhymes.' Here the little pills taken "all the time" are a way of escaping "false" people. And I cant help being reminded of Blake's "mind forged manacles" in "Chains" where there is the search for something devoid of said chains; "something I couldn't buy." Time and time again the only means of escaping such falseness and limitation is the mind, dreams and love. The futility of this escape weighs over this album, providing the gorgeous melancholia that Donaghue's narratives so immerse themselves in.
               These themes and motifs work like a painting, repeating whispered meaning over the course of the album.Through recurrent images of things such as eyes, light/ dark, rivers, animals and the stars. It works as a whole. To take any one song on its own is to miss the point. This is aided by there being no obvious radio friendly single such as "Goddess on a Highway" or the sublime "Holes" from Deserter's Songs.  Thus contributing to the superiority of the album as a whole, and its organic movement towards the blissful realisation that; "All is one, All is mind....and all is dream", on the final cut, 'Hercules.' There is no point trying to reconcile reality with the world of dreams. And, it seems to suggest, that although these are dreams they are more real than the reality of the physical world. Thus providing a kind of liberation.
          These solipsistic struggles would seem fatuous if not for the music and the strength of the songwriting. Indeed, although being an ambitious and overwrought concept album, there is no filler, no rambling songs just concise highly melodic ones. Knitted together with lush instrumentation and glossy production, the songs create walls of sound appropriate to the grandeur of the themes touched upon. With use of such unusual instruments (in indie spheres at least) as the mellotron flute and electric saw, Mercury Rev sound wonderfully different to anything else.
                     It is this sonic variety, and Donaghue's lovely voice which sends the album to the level of the great. And this, I feel, is the strongest in their pantheon of albums. The sentiments can sound twee and hopelessly fey on paper, and on other efforts such as the more commercial, Deserter's Songs, this becomes an issue for me. Though their propensity for occasional mawkishness is tempered here by an all pervasive darkness that makes for a much more compelling listen. This is the sound of a band, and producer, at their peak. Making truly profound, unaffected music that is at once cerebral and mindlessly thrilling to listen to.