Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (73 of them)
Night and Fog is a great tune, one of their best. All is Dream as a whole is merely ok though. The Secret Migration is dull except for In a Funny Way, Across Your Ocean and First Time Mother's Joy (I love the harmonies on the latter.) I haven't listened to anything since, due to the sense of an irreversible decline into increasing blandness.
― Freedom, Friday, 17 March 2017 16:06 (seven years ago) link
I thought Deserters Songs was amazing at the time, but I'm not sure about it now. If I were to be a DS vs The Soft Bulletin, I think the songwriting on the latter is stronger, and has caused it to hold up better. Yoshimi has a lot of good stuff too, but At War with the Mystics seemed to be all texture and nothing else. I never listened to the later supposed return to form. As for the Rev, I think Boces and SYOTOS are probably the most enduring for the mix of inventiveness and tunes (Yerself is Steam is perhaps just a little *too* self-indulgent.)
― Freedom, Friday, 17 March 2017 16:11 (seven years ago) link
Count me among the "All is Dream is underrated" crowd, and, like yesca, I was always shocked by the fact that the record fared so poorly (relative to the previous album, of course). Perhaps part of it could be blamed on the overly-ambitious Disney-isms, part of it was that maybe they followed up a critically acclaimed album too soon, part of it could be that people were just getting over that particular sound by that point, I dunno. I think individual songs on All is Dream are great but its one of those weird albums that doesn't work as whole, somehow. Maybe it's a sequencing issue?
I know this: if they'd pulled a Neutral Milk Hotel and stopped making records after Deserter's Songs, there would be multiple Mercury Rev threads revived every time there was so much as a a rumor of new Mercury Rev music, and people would be talking about them in the same hushed, reverent whispers they do MBV, Boards of Canada, and, err, Neutral Milk Hotel.
― Wimmels, Saturday, 18 March 2017 13:54 (seven years ago) link