All Is Dream

The world of music – indeed, the world in general – must now without failure raise their spiritual glasses in deep tribute to the mercurial Mercury Rev, who with their newest “elpee” “All I Dream” have singlehandedly salvaged our music from the abyss into which the “Casio Cowboys” tanker was driving us. They have struck a symbolic blow for the princely virtues of musicianship and craftmanship which has so sorely been lacking in popular music enterprises since the Alan Parsons Project’s unsurpassable “I, Robot.”

The yearning introductory elegy, “The Dark Is Rising,” appropriately underpinned by a steadily ascending yet plangent bassline worthy of John Wetton at his most skilled, saves music from the crippling banalities under which it has been forced to toil these past few eons. The Blunstonesque sopranino/C-melody vocal line intercuts so precisely with the painful guitar screams that it is worthy almost of Norma Winstone’s similar symbiosis with the Babbington/Laurence twin-bass axis on Mike Gibbs’ “Poor Will Suite,” the apex of contemporary musical achievement surpassed only by Pekka Pohjola’s “The Mathematician’s Air Display” and Neil Ardley’s majestic “Kaleidoscope of Rainbows.” Here we hear Depression dreams. One yearns for Hodges to be alive at this new dawn to add his bottomless, craftsmanlike alto saxophone to this intriguing musical stew.

but do you hear what he’s singing about?

The darkness symbol is maintained and strengthened in the second album track “Tides of the Moon.” Oh how I fainted at this correlative counterpart to Vangelis’ “Albedo 0.39” which rivals only Mike Oldfield’s “Ommadawn” as the apex of popular music as we know it. The guitar is masterful and dextrous.

it’s not like “Deserter’s.” Not all of it anyway. It’s not them trying to be rock. Not apart from “Hercules” anyway. But you can’t hear that, can you Derek?

and the mournful depths of “Lincoln’s Eyes” reveal us irrevocably to be there with Freedman on the crest of Mount Rushmore, staring down at the historicism of Negro-originated popular culture with the merest hint of a wrinkle

I never dreamed I’d lose you that’s what he’s singing

I never dreamed I’d lose you

except the only difference is in my dreams I’m not strong either

this means something to me right now you know?

And who would have thought that Mercury Rave, prefacing this masterpiece with ten years of “punk shock” wilful atonality which should only be practised by practiced practitioners of the calibre of Surman or Skidmore or Holdsworth

come in dylan thomas Shankar or Dankworth

Where once the waters of your face Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows, The dead turns up its eye;

they all said I kept my composure yesterday. That I did brilliantly. Considering.

Lake surely was right to condemn punk “mock” as the end of honest music

JUST SHUT UP DULL YOU WERE SHUT UP YEARS AGO ANYWAY BECAUSE THIS FUCKING RECORD IS SINGING TO ME AND ONLY TO ME IN A WAY IT COULDN’T HAVE DONE EVEN A WEEK AGO AND I HATE IT FOR LOVING IT BECAUSE IT CAN’T BE LOVED

Where once the mermen through your ice Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers Through salt and root and roe.

“Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman” from the unparalleled “Works Vol 2”

BECAUSE IT’S ONLY A CD I CAN’T LOVE IT IT CAN’T LOVE ME BECAUSE IT’S COLD AND MOTIONLESS AND WON’T SMILE BACK AT ME OR HOLD ME BECAUSE I WANT HER HER HER I WANT HER BACK NOT YOU NOT ANY OF YOU BLOODY ARTEFACTS

In th’ dark, she knew The touch of my hand

There shall be corals in your beds, There shall be serpents in your tides, ‘Till all our sea-faiths die.

And I’m in the dark and I don’t know And I’m scared of the dark and of being Alone Here

Kasper Hauser: Because we can’t think of a better reason