Mercury Rev

 

"We had a really good night last night. And I'm not talking about the concert," begins pixie-voiced frontman Jonathan Donahue, ominously. It is tempting to think this is the beginning of another drug-addled anecdote, but it becomes apparent that the American is talking about the Obama Effect reaching the live scene. He describes phoning home and hearing the cheering, "like we'd won the best football match ever".

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From druggy mayhem to observing US politics is a metaphor for Mercury Rev's career. No longer the wild-eyed, noise-crazed nutters who walked into the audience (or the bar) during gigs, nowadays they are almost elder statesmen. Not that Donahue has entirely calmed down. He drinks wine from the bottle, pounds imaginary drums and adopts a crucifixion pose in the first 30 seconds.

After breaking through with 1998's Deserter's Songs, the Rev's friends the Flaming Lips have taken the psychedelic pop blueprint to a bigger audience, leaving the Rev struggling to find a new direction. Lately, they have decided to get weird again, and songs from the latest album, Snowflake Midnight, sound like Brian Eno-produced noises of haunted houses with disembodied dub beats. It is disconcerting and mesmerising, but you wonder where they are going with it all. They are best when strong songs meet the sound, such as Deserter's Songs' disarmingly pretty Goddess On a Hiway or the new, fragile Butterfly's Wing, which Donahue slips into New Order's Love Vigilantes. At times, it all crystallises into a beatific, blissed out state. Hopefully the Rev Effect will reach Obama.

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