Mercury Rev
The Secret Migration

THE REVIEW

The Mercury Rev return with new fairy-tale and dreamy pages.
Yes, pages: the CD packaging is a true little book. The cardboard cover featuring a purple and gold fairy-butterfly, the illustrations in the booklet, the very texture of the paper: it really resembles an ancient book of fairy tales.
And pressing the stereo buttons with "The Secret Migration" (V2 Music, 2005) inside is like leafing through the pages of "Fantastic Tales of the Nineteenth Century", a collection curated by Italo Calvino (Arnoldo Mondatori Editore, 1983), which - fortunate coincidence - I'm reading these days. Both the atmospheres of the two works are amazing, and at times, their harmony is too.

For instance, I read the story Autumn Spell, by a German romantic author; and I listen to Secret For A Song, the opening track of the album. In both, a lady of unreal and disturbing charm; and a secret confided with a troubled soul.
Joseph von Eichendorff writes in 1809: "She kissed me on the lips and disappeared into the dark corridors. A gem from her flower sparkled in the movement and at her kiss a terrified delight coiled in my veins. I recalled with terror the dreadful words she whispered to me while leaving".
Today Jonathan Donahue sings: "Dawn brought a wild light back into her tired eyes / like violets / opening her eyelids to the light / ... / I'll take you where the morning stars burns just for you / my dark country bride / I'll tell you a secret / I'll sell you a secret for a song".

From Calvino's introduction: "If in most cases the romantic image creates around itself a space populated by visionary apparitions, there is also the fantastic tale in which the supernatural remains invisible, 'felt' more than 'seen', becoming part of an inner dimension".
Indeed: it is felt, oh yes. The tales of Mercury Rev are 'sonic', full of supernatural sounds: carpets of strings, polished glimmers, Jonathan's ethereal voice, Grasshopper's hallucinated guitars, the touches of producer Dave Fridmann, increasingly mastering these themes (his very touches have recently colored the music of - I only mention two - Sparklehorse and The Flaming Lips) and more in tune with the dream-pop path Mercury Rev have embraced in their recent works.

We are far from the heights of "Deserter's Songs" (1998) and even more from the bizarre psychedelia of their beginnings ("Yerself Is Steam" was from 1991), but it certainly cannot be said that 2005 has started badly in the fairy world of the seven notes. Quite the opposite.

...Ah, that book of tales, read it. You will savor, in the tones of the era, a very modern and exquisite view on the interiority of the individual. And you will regret reaching the word "Finis", the same written at the bottom of the booklet of "The Secret Migration".