After several EP releases, The Secret Migration collates a series of crystalline, gossamer work by Johnathan Donahue and his confreres and illustrates the repeated lyric Life is but a dream. Providing escapist hymns with merit, the disc proffers pastoral lullabies for the end of Gen X now on the verge of real adulthood. It's the perfect soundtrack for folks trapped between the hippie visions of their parents' generation and today's cold, hard realities in Bush America, music for people who crave truth, beauty, retro romanticism as they pray for transcendence. The Secret Migration is the most effective sound of postmodern psychedelia poised between the dark crystals of Anton Newcombe's oeuvre and the fauxsunshine of the Polyphonic Spree. Indeed, Mercury Rev effectively enters the roots cathedral once limned by Stephen Stills (surprise, surprise ... see "Arise") and deploys the jangly guitars, horns and electric piano just right. A masterpiece of the ethereal -- surging, exultant Wall of Sound, unafraid to bedazzle with myth and virtuosity -- this record is Mercury Rev's vehicle to the mountaintop.
