Mercury Rev
All is Dream
V2 2001

My favourite album of 2001 (I’m sure you’ve been wondering). It’s the same recipe as Deserter’s Songs, which won all those album of the year awards a couple of years before, but I actually think this one is better. So we get songs which are built roughly like rock songs, but with piano, flute, strings, female backing vocals and something that sounds like a theramin, which could all be the score to an old Disney film. You can virtually see Snow White patting the little forest creatures. Then it’ll go back to a guitar rock-out, and so on. Plus, of course, there are Jonathan Donahue’s reedy, quavering vocals, a bit like Neil Young, which people seem to either love or hate. Personally I find them very touching. (Did you see them on Jools Holland? He was tragically out of tune, but whatever, I don’t care. He looks the part, too. Good shadows under the eyes.)

As it happens, the only song I don’t like is ‘The Dark is Rising’, which was the big first single. Is it just me or is anyone else tired of rock musicians with orchestras? ‘Look, we’re serious musicians; the record company’s forked out for an orchestra, don’t’cha know?’ I didn’t mind it on Spiritualized’s Ladies and Gentlemen..., but it wasn’t a cliche then. Plus the time changes on this one don’t work.

But after that I’m totally happy. Basically, as far as I can gather, they’re tormented ex-smackheads, which suits me fine. There’s a plaintive, lost quality to a lot of it. The lyrics send out images, moods, little scenes, without being very specific, which is quite crafty, since it leaves you filling in your own ideas. ‘Lincoln’s Eyes’, for instance: to me it’s about being in love with a junkie, listing a hundred different meanings of heroin and in the end saying that it ‘lives in your soul and loves you like I do.’ He doesn’t stand a chance with smack as competition.

(How old-fashioned of me to be puzzling about what the lyrics mean. People don’t do that in reviews any more, do they?)

‘Little Rhymes’ is another great one, about filling in those huge expanses of time (by making up rhymes in his head, taking pills) so familiar to any ex-addict. Then ‘You’re my Queen’ would be a straight-up two and a half minute rock song, if it wasn’t for the tinkling-stream piano at the start and those thin, high vocals. And it does something really clever with the tune which only a musician would be able to name. All in all, excellent.