Brilliant unappreciated album I: All is Dream

All is Dream

Mercury Rev

2001

Discovered: Late 2002.



In mid-2002, I underwent a radical shift in musical taste which meant that I entered a period of earnest searching for new music. Being in "discovery" mode, I borrowed this CD from a friend of mine without any idea of what it could sound like. I was sucked in by the initial orchestral swell of "The Dark is Rising" and then, as I think with all newcomers to Mercury Rev, befuddled by the extraordinarily strange voice of Jonathan Donahue. But the overall beauty of the music and the sense of innocence and wonder in the voice really grabbed me. The opening lyrics are so crushing "I dreamed of you on my farm/I dreamed of you in my arms/In my dreams I'm always wrong." I also love the lines "I dreamed the two of us were talking/about life's mysteries/The words that flowed between friends/winding streams without end." Anywho, this combined with aching violin parts and YES! a french horn part! make this song a pretty glorious listen.

And then comes the shift in mood. A couple of darker numbers in Tides of the Moon and Chains, followed up by a song that, well, most people who have listened to it have thought it's one of the spookiest, strangest songs put to CD. Lincoln's Eyes. If I ever, say, were to see a ghost slowly flitting across a darkened hallway, I would want to have Lincoln's Eyes playing. Not a scary ghost, just an other-worldly strangely beautiful ghost. Sample lyrics include "What explodes like a fractal/Pops like a light bulb/Looks really awful/At four in the morning/Moves with a dead stare/Coils around your ankles/Fangs long as neckties/And strikes without warning?" and "What is dark like a birthmark/Pulls like a magnet/Male and female/And covets like a dragon/Grows to a shark length/Contracts to amoeba/Lives in your soul/And loves you like I do?" (I think the answer is Abe Lincoln). If Gollum wanted to win his riddle-off with Bilbo, he shoulda used this riddle and not his silly "Thirty-two horses on a red hill..." or the Time one.

So after that chilling number, the entire album suddenly shifts mood to sprightly, happy tunes like Nite and Fog and a Drop in Time. In fact, when Donahue sings in Nite and Fog "Wise men want fame/Fools want gold/Sailors want water" you think, "What? No dark imagery here?" but then the second time around he sings "Vampires want darkness/Monsters want souls/Spiders want corners" you feel so much better. The second half of the disc ramps up to the closer Hercules which got me to say "and Hercules" every time anyone would say "you and me" probably for about three or four years.

Anyway, a couple of interesting things about the album. When you hear guitars in You're my Queen, you realize that for the past seven tracks, you can't remember hearing a guitar. It's quite interesting. Second, the guitarist's name is Grasshopper.

The point of it all. The album makes no sense. It's impossible to peg stylistically. But it's incredibly appealing. And every time I return to it, it's all the better. Which makes their follow up stinker "The Secret Migration" even more tragic.