Mercury Rev
Born Horses
Bella Union
Following flight plans of rapturous midnight migrations, the lushly arranged Born Horses violates the polluted air space of the callous and cruel, its misty, astral beat poetry blowing softly across urban desolation and empty deserts. To quote U2, “sleep comes like a drug,” if it comes at all for revered psychedelic-rock nomads Mercury Rev, their waking dreams begging to be analyzed.
Never more elegant, never more openly rudderless or exposed lyrically, yet ultimately hopeful and compassionate, Mercury Rev often drifts off into fantasy here, as the slow, sweeping title track imagines a mythical equine world inhabited by wild, flying horses, instead of humans. Violin trills and lonely saxophone cut through its intoxicating, surreal reverie, whereas the shadowy, jazzy noir of “Mood Swings” — a cold brew of exhausted piano, airy vocals, and shapely horns — suffers from insomnia and frets about its temperament, and a surging, bombastic “A Bird with No Address” indulges in restlessness and the wonder of aviation. They are cleared for takeoff.
Soundtracking its richly drawn theater of the mind with ambient chamber-pop and jazz sophistication, echoes of folk and psych heard from the wings, Mercury Rev leads the shimmering Born Horses to watery passages, where it drinks of the expansive, rippling epic “Your Hammer, My Heart” before licking its wounds and falling like a chandelier, breaking into a thousand shiny pieces. They see “Patterns” emerge in the universe, rushing with excitement through rain showers of excited tremolo. They gallop through the dusky twilight of an undulating “There’s Always Been a Bird in Me” like The War On Drugs and navigate the dark, biblical flood and immense crescendo of “Everything I Thought I Had Lost” with the faith of Noah.
Born Horses is a different kind of masterpiece, confronting bereavement and setting the stage for recovery in stylish, seductive nuance, rather than all-out, sonic bombardment, although there’s plenty of that, too. Ride or die. It’s your choice.
