Live At Vicar St., Dublin

‘Got Perspective?’ enquires an overhead projection, one of dozens of metaphysical koans Mercury Rev will pitch at us tonight, in between flashing fuchsia-and-violet images of, er, double-helixes and em, animals flying through abstract space and stuff. Yes, we do have perspective: for a start, if these screen-saver squiggles and Be Your Own Life Coach mantras are meant to inspire feelings of blissed-out philosophical introspection, the Rev should know that what they’re actually doing is making us think of patchouli-reeking Transit vans with the Egyptian pyramids airbrushed onto the side. Secondly – not unlike the projections, actually – Mercury Rev’s current album, The Secret Migration, aims for wondrous nature-philia, but mostly achieves a weird combination of flakiness and something approaching bombast: unusual for this most guileless and naturally dramatic of bands. As such, quite a lot of tonight’s set edges, worryingly, a tiny, tiny bit into the red on the gauche-o-meter.
It should be said that, musically, as usual, everything sounds great, of which more later – but too often with the Migration stuff, a double helping of frosted flakiness in the lyrics department lets the side down. The undeniably sonically beautiful ‘Diamonds’, ostensibly a joyous paean to the deathless wonder of the natural world, wanders lyrically into moon-worshipping-at-Stonehenge territory; and the Princess Bride-meets-Spinal-Tap-ism of ‘Black Forest (Lorelei)’, involving, ahem, dusky maidens and noble steeds and whatnot, is again sonically flawless but lyrically impossible to nod your head along to without blushing.
Mind you, if any live band can pull off the aural equivalent of a National Geographic special about the winter solstice filmed while on acid, it’s Mercury Rev, who, we are happy to report, still make a noise of matchless panoramic brilliance, their stately, etherised sweep still the very definition of purple mountain majesty, their percussion section, in particular, still the sound of every wave the moon has ever yanked to shore crashing at once. And if their current back-to-nature trip mostly just makes you long for the days when, without invoking nature or mysticism, they were able to find goddesses on the highway, goddesses in the car – well, the oldies if anything sound better now than they did then. ‘Opus 40’, ‘Holes’, ‘Tonite It Shows’, a heartwrenching ‘Funny Bird’ and a lonelier-than-lonely ‘Little Rhymes’ still take the breath away, and we loved the Hollywood-diva drama of ‘Spiders And Flies’, Jonathan Donahue simultaneously soul-baringly honest and as camp as cheese sandwiches, floating his arms slowly up and down like Ophelia backstroking into oblivion.
In a word, current album or no, they remain one of the best live bands we’ve ever seen. Which puts things in perspective, thanks.