Mercury Rev - The Secret Migration

4.5 - USA - 2005

Well here it is. In my review of All Is Dream, I mentioned how that album, good though it was, anticipated the dreck of the Rev's later work, and so I decided to dust off this, the group's sixth effort, to ascertain whether a reappraisal was in order. No, it definitely sucks. Overproduced schlock, heavy on the keyboards and those electronica touches only serve to date the album (and not in that Old Weird America timelessness of Deserter's Songs, an album and aesthetic that seems well and truly deserted at this point). The production is good on some technical level, but, despite the presence of Grasshopper's distorted guitar reels, it still comes across like the soft rock of Air Supply or Ambrosia. Opener "Secret For A Song" and second track "Across Yer Ocean" are decent enough, but by the time Jonathan Donahue starts whimbling about being "a white horse" offering rides "thru a black forest" in his obnoxious effeminate squeak, I'm just about ready to toss the thing out the window. The lyrics are definitely a low point here, like they're cribbed from some 15 year old girl with too much eye make-up's secret diary or something. It's all just fucking insufferable, though, oddly, "First-Time Mother's Joy (Flying)" is not as terrible as its title would suggest.