Mercury Rev - Snowflake in a Hot World (V2)
4/5
By: Stephen Maughan
Seven albums on, and now over ten years since Deserters Songs blew us away with it's near perfect emotional landscape, Mercury Rev release, just in time to catch the end of winter, 'Snowflake in a Hot World'.
Mercury Rev are a band that ooze onfidence, and once again they seemingly effortlessly serve up another picture perfect dreamy tale of hope and abandonment. "You lonely little spark, Too frozen to feel, So fleeting and so real" echoes Jonathon Donahue through the dense and bubbling electronic music, which like so many Mercury Rev tracks is all consuming and darkly powerful, but never lingers in your heart. Millions of words have been used (wasted?) on Mercury Rev reviews, and critics for years have lazily thrown around phrases like "epic", "sublime", and "beautiful", and even those choosing controversy for the sake of it, "elitist", "pretentious", and "boring", and no doubt all these firework words will once again be used for this single.
Personally, I'd call it textured poetry. It's a good single, you'll play it again and again, you'll think a little about the lyrics and wonder just how the sound was created. Sure, it's not Deserters Songs, but it's challenging, experimental, and provocative all the same.
If you are this type of person, and let's face it there can be no question some Mercury Rev fans are, and you decide to buy it in a physical format as a piece of art, rest assured it will look good on your shelf, next to a book of William Wordsworth poems, and under a Paul Gauguin art print. You might well also have Donahue's advice "Don't let them get to you, don't let them tell you you're all the same" hand written across your bedroom mirror.
Artists in this article: Mercury Rev
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