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Title: Sonic Hogwash
Review: On All Is Dream, Mercury Rev follow the most lovely song they've recorded, the aching orchestral "The Dark Is Rising", with 45 minutes of sonic hogwash. This is not news. Since 1991's Yerself Is Steam (still their best), Mercury Rev have been purveying the new progressive rock with disparate results - the listless Boces, the spacey funk of See You On the Other Side, the over-praised Americana of Deserter's Songs. All Is Dream is nominally better than Deserter's Songs - sonics reach out and grab you (the melancholy undertow of "Tides of the Moon"; the strings and glockenspiel of "A Drop in Time"), but the weirdness of the arrangements never feels organic, just odd. At this point, all this should sound effortless. Most of the time on All Is Dream, you can hear the strain as they reach for the next bizarre effect. Successful eccentricity isn't an affectation; it's a natural state of being.
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