Seven albums in, and Mercury Rev are again on the move. Snowflake Midnight finds New York’s veteran sonic explorers downing the tools that resulted in 2005’s disappointing The Secret Migration and discovering a whole new, largely electronic palette: computers and synthesisers, sequencers and vocoders. Which isn’t to say the Rev have entirely abandoned their familiar brand of heady, cosmic Americana: as "Snowflake in a Hot World" gusts into life on Jonathon Donohue’s optimistic, star-gazing croon, it’s clear that the themes that have long driven this band--nature and mysticism, magic and dreams--remain intact. Now, though, electronics are woven deep in their design. Often it's successful--take the gorgeous "Runaway Raindrop", shimmering electronic minimalism that recalls electronic Krautrock godheads Cluster. Elsewhere, somewhat meandering: see the overblown, seven-minute "Dream of Young Girl As a Flower", which veers unsteadily between serene drift and pounding electronica like Donohue and Grasshopper are still trying to master the instruction manual. But while it might not be a reinvention quite as stark as their panoramic, career-defining 1998 album Deserter's Songs, evolution is preferable to inertia, and seven albums in Mercury Rev are still mutating, following their muse like leaves tossed on the wind. --Louis Pattison
BBC Review

It hardly seems possible that Mercury Rev have been around for the best part of two decades. Even more unlikely that they are still together at all given the constant turmoil and changes of personnel, but here they are, after a four-year silence (their soundtrack for 2006's Bye Bye Blackbird notwithstanding) with their seventh studio album.

A word of warning just to start with: whatever you do, don't, just DON'T, go to the band's website and risk bumping into their seriously off-putting description of their new nine-track offering as ''bursting with patterns and mandala.......
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