Mercury Rev are out touring their excellent new album “Born Horses” which raises all sorts of questions – the new album has a refreshed musical palette to support the new songs delivered by Jonathan Donahue in a more spoken word style. Is that what we’ll be getting in Cambridge? The Junction transformed for a night into a surrealistic jazz club? Will it be saxophones all the way? Oh…we can’t keep you in suspense. No, virtually none of that (some saxophone though), and the night would have an excellent set list with a couple of takes from the new album but mostly really big numbers from albums such as “Deserter’s Songs” and “All Is Dream”. Big numbers, which need a big sound – and this six piece line-up of Mercury Rev certainly delivered a big sound. In drummer Joe Magistro they’ve added a powerful master of rhythm whose imaginative playing impressed all night. The only slight downer was that the splendidly foppish Jonathan Donahue’s vocals were way too low down in the mix across ‘The Funny Bird‘, ‘Tonite It Shows‘ and ‘Vermillion‘ to the extent that it seemed that the songs would be carried solely on the superb playing with just snatches of lyrics. It was certainly dramatic – with Donahue whipping up a storm from the band members, conducting the glorious cacophony. And that would have been ok. And then, miraculously, with those oh so recognisable opening notes, ‘Love Sick‘ saved the day. With Donahue also strapping on a guitar, Mercury Rev pushed up the guitar band side of their nature whilst also giving a stunning rendition of the Dylan classic.
Returning to their own material, but with perhaps a Dylan inspired reshaping informing the presentation, ‘Runaway Raindrop‘ was a revelation – now carried on power drumming it became a vigorous triumph expanding into space as Donahue air drums and the song extends and extends – how long was it? An hour? Two? If it had been, that would have been just fine, such was the exhilaration – how to top that? Well, how about the easily bopping ‘Goddess On A Hiway‘? Perfection, and the return to the new album with ‘Ancient Love‘ again showed that the song had been reshaped into a rockier version, the jazz gone gone gone, until the arrival of a long jazzy coda which itself segued back into the real and definitely rocking coda. A lovely ‘Tides of the Moon‘ just served to emphasize that this was a band that was truly on fire – little has been said so far of Grasshopper’s guitar work – it was devastating throughout, but particularly burning up the atmosphere here.
The new ‘Your Hammer My Heart‘ is a glorious transmutation of emotional pain into a bearable golden memory as the only way to cope with a doomed passion. And then it was time for the biggest of the big hitters in the Mercury Rev songbook – introduced as dedicated to Roger Penrose – ‘Holes‘ was as plaintive and spectacularly different from anything else by anyone else as it had been when “Deserter’s Songs” had first come into the musical world. Spectacular sorrow, magical realism turned into musical splendour. And continuing into The Band meets Mott the Hoople of ‘Opus 40‘ with, it seemed on this night anyway, as an extra instrumental break riffing on ‘Run Like Hell.’ Well, maybe. Which meant, with the emotional levels ramped up there was really only one way to go – even higher. If all rock is poetry then ‘The Dark Is Rising‘ is the very highest poetry – is there a more affecting couple of lines than “I always dreamed I’d love you / I never dreamed I’d lose you / In my dreams I’m always strong“? And is there a better set of opening bars in the Mercury Rev repertoire? Surely not.
There would be no encore – but what a way to end the show. It’s likely that even having proved how good the songs from “Born Horses” can be with this lively band, the album will still follow “The Light in You” and “Snowflake Midnight” into relative obscurity in the live realm, even ‘Secret Migration‘ was only tapped once. On the other hand it’s hard to argue against the current set list, a set of songs that still have the power to dazzle with their uniqueness. The only solution is another thirty minutes…that would work.
Opening the evening was French experimental pop artist Nina Savary, at times like a one woman mini-Mercury Rev with a couple of synths giving the main accompaniment to most songs. Songs of sorrow and broken love – unless sung in French as a couple were when the main topic became being ‘triste.’ Dressed as if for a walk in the country in late spring, and occasionally embellishing the performance with interpretive dance, Nina Savary can be safely filed under quirky. Interesting, but quirky.
