Album Review: Mercury Rev - The Secret Migration.

It’s time for some critical honesty: I’d never heard a Mercury Rev album before listening to The Secret Migration. Sure, they’d occasionally popped up as minor blips on my cultural radar, making seemingly ubiquitous appearances on chill-out mixes, but none of their records had ever been slipped into my CD player.

Which, it seems, was a mistake. As opening track, Secret For A Song, began building in my headphones, like the little, less esoteric brother of Kid A, I realised why this old band from Buffalo, New York were so often lauded by punters and critics alike. On a cloudy Monday morning, with dew on the windows and birds chirping, this was exactly what I wanted to hear.

Snaking, climbing, falling, New Order basslines. Nigh-bombastic drums reverberating in the middle of my head. High, searching vocals. The music rising and building, and then crashing down suddenly. Floating and swimming and lying on the grass on an Autumn day. This is headphone music that seems happy to slide into your ears, languidly stumbling on to a bed in the middle of your brain, curling up and singing to the ceiling.

Indeed. The Secret Migration is simultaneously relaxing and moving. You can see why the Rev have made their way on to the Sunday morning playlists of drug pig clubbers coming down from nasty coke and dubious E, but they offer more than the downbeat, chilled-out predictability of the usual Café Del Mar pap.

Contemporary touchstones abound: the technoblips of The Notwist, the heavy piano of a relaxed Soulwax, a little of the drama of Radiohead, the pomp of Muse. Mercury Rev aren’t as interesting or surprising as these European Sensations, but their predictability, oddly, works for them. They instantly lull you into a comfort zone, but they never stumble into the mindless, tossed-off formulas of Coldplay.

In The Wilderness shows them at their best, pumping and surging, the drums sporadically thumped, pushing their way towards the end of the track. The track builds, and falls, and suddenly stops for the vocals – ‘how can the woman I love be so strong?’ – and it all starts again.

The album won’t set the world on fire, and nor does it want to. It offers nothing more than a place to be at dawn and dusk, and a mood to feel when you don’t know where you are. It’s lovely and sweet. Album closer Down Poured The Heavens is suitably divine, a lullaby in the tradition of The Smiths’ Asleep. And, on a cloudy Monday morning, it’s exactly what you’ll want to hear.

(Originally published at fasterlouder.com.au).