Mercury Rev have dropped their third full-length masterpiece, so it's time once again to wax evangelical, goddamnit, until you see the light. My notebook is smeared with tears of joy over how fantastic (in all senses of the word) this is.
Vocalist David Baker's gone but isn't missed. Great guy and all and he could turn a mean phrase, but without him Mercury Rev shine even harder, soar even higher, explode in even more directions. Mercury Rev have virtually abandoned rock but don't fret, rock fans, because what they do with chaos/beauty/noise is akin to what Einstein did with numbers. Anyway, the Rev are too wayward and wild for the constrictions of rock. So imagine Brian Wilson at his creative zenith collaborating with Sly Stone at his narcotic popwise peak. Then multiply the results by a Dixieland jazz band on LSD led by Miles Davis. Add liberal doses of avant-fuck-off guitar blare and melodies Hank Mancini would die for were he still alive.
You can sense Other Side will be extraordinary just by looking at some of the instruments used: mojo stick, bowed saws, quartz arhoolie flute, single exhaust clarinet, Tettix Wave AccumulatorŽ. Throw the usual rock paraphernalia and Jonathan Donahue's wondrous childlike voice into the centrifuge of the band's collective genius and you get an album too brilliant for sober analysis. Opener "Empire State (Son House in Excelsis)" highlights the Rev's lightning shifts from summertime care-freedom to overcast free-form freakouts that hotwire your molecules. There's more going on in this song than in most bands' careers. "Young Man's Stride" rocks you like a candy-coated hurricane with guitars that sound like shredded kazoos. Things get deliciously syrupy on "Sudden Ray of Hope," a bubblegum soul tune that's tempered by the sandstorm grit of Grasshopper and Donahue's guitars. On "Racing the Tide" crashing waves of Rev noise alternate with passages of unbearable melancholic beauty. Only on "Everlasting Arm" do they topple into Tin-Pan Alley schmaltz. Everywhere else the Rev inject a sweetness that I normally can't stomach in music but which they somehow turn into the most poignant tunes this side of the Midnight Cowboy theme.
Mercury Rev's debut, Yerself is Steam, will dazzle me till I'm senile. Boces will forever amuse kids of all ages. But Other Side will stand as the Rev's crystal palace to posterity. (Beggars Banquet)