Mercury Rev-The Light In You (2015)

Mercury Rev-The Light In You (2015)

I think I need the demons in order to write, but the demons have gone. It bothers me a lot. I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to find a melody.”

Brian Wilson

By: Ghost Writer

Yes, this is Autumn, and Mercury Rev for me is Autums music, it translate for me into a soft and cold breeze of air, we sense Autumn in the skin, but it triggers nostalgia in the brain, I was a big fan of Mercury Rev's Deserter's Song, at the time I felt very vulnerable and undecided about certain things in my life, that record was a scream of my exuberant youth finally going into the black hole and assuming a new sense of maturity.

But now that is Autumn I don't feel myself connected this time to MR music, it doesn't come as natural as before, something is not coming in MR music as natural as before although this time the Revs seems to get really closer to the bone.

The Light in You sounds exactly like the kind of record Brian Wilson would make today if he was still the same young man that recorded Pet Sounds, of course Wilson is not daring young man anymore, and of course the world is not the same, it is perhaps we are not so innocent as we were before, and rather than connecting Autumn with youth going away, now it's about the world facing hard times.

The Queen of Swans is pretty, its musical arrangements are undeniably beautiful, the band's detailed arrangements come to the front, it quickly builds up in an almost classical way, but it faild yo generate the emotional deep of the least orquestrated records done before, and I find quite uncomfortable listening to Amelie, a strange rip off of sorts of the classic Caroline No with its powerful echo chamber effects, that simply goes nowhere at all.

You've Gone with so Little So Long is not so long lasting as its title but at least sets finally things in motion, it has a good dynamic and the string arrangements this time come right creating a cool emotional tornado that really starts growing inside, just to get on a more relaxed modus operandi on Central Park East that gets into the moody reflective but not universally enough to connect in a really emotional way.

But you can't call Emotional Free Fall a failure, for me it doesn't sound like MR but is a new niche found by the band and it truly works, it helps that it moves and remains dynamic with lots of things going on in the rhythm section, and as hard work ends up paying well, Coming Up for Air delievers fairly good results, although heavy ornated backlashes a bit, but again, insistent drumming ends up saving the day.

Are You Ready? Give me mixed up feelings, is a definite 60s throw back that doesn't add nothing to the record at all, and things although intense simply lost control on Sunflower, a definite nod to Wilson music.

There are too many strange things going on in this record, too many ideas not jellying together, some desperate moods and easy complacency that don't convinces at all, Moth Light might be beautiful but ends up at the end if the record almost ostracized from the rest of the emotive songs, and closer Rainy Day Record although up beat ends up sounding like a bonus track or something that simply doesn't belong, and that's precisely the problem with this record, it doesn't belong to this times, just like it did before...