Mercury Rev: Snowflake Midnight

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.