SNOWFLAKE MIDNIGHT

Mercury Rev created an extraordinarily lush and vivid soundworld on 'Snowflake Midnight'. This is far deeper into ambient psych than the band's previous offerings. The usual imaginative lyrics drop in and out and it manages the odd echo of the previous trio of their albums without ever sounding like a copy. Though the music here is more densely constructed. There's some great atmospheric piano, various kinds of percussion, including beatbox, hard edged guitar, all over Donahue's high floating vocals. 'Butterfly's Wing' also has haunting children's voices. A very magic garden of sound. I particularly like 'People Are So Unpredictable' which takes us into almost complete ambient territory with its delicate tapestry of shifting synth chords. It's certainly demanding and doesn't lend itself easily to being background music. But it does have the capacity to keep surprising you. I don't know how many times I'd been through it before the bizarre drumming and the strange elements that make up 'Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower' finally struck me. That track is like an exercise in throwing everything that shouldn't be in one song together and still coming up with a beautiful and strange concoction. It is certainly a far cry from the group's successful Deserters Songs. If you want to hear some fearless sonic pioneers with a love of psychedelia, pushing the envelope on strange sounds, definitely investigate this. It's very engaging and uplifting as well as challenging. If you like this, I strongly urge you to get 'Strange Attractor', else it's just incomplete. Four soild stars!