Mercury Rev, The Secret Migration

Mercury Rev, The Secret Migration is a real grower. Although I didn't really care for it at first, after a few listens I'm starting to see the subtle beauty in the record. While this isn't as accessible as the much-praised Deserter's Songs, the album is definitely worth sticking with because as a concept it works very well, once you start to realise where they're going. The usual ethereal, dreamy melodies and unusual sounds are combined with lyrical jaunts about nature which are somewhere between a fairytale and a Greenpeace advertisement. Mercury Rev excel at the atmospheric and this is certainly an album to play with the lights down, the candles lit and in a slighty giddy, drunken state of mind. Magnificent.