Mistletone presents American dreamweavers Mercury Rev, bringing their neo-psychedelic stardust to Sydney for their first headline show since 2002, with a beautiful new album, The Light In You, in tow.
Seven years on from the band's last album, Snowflake Midnight, The Light In You more than lives up to its billing. The record is filled with wondrous and voluminous kaleidoscopic detail, but also intimate moments of calm, and altogether stands up to the very best that this notable band of maverick explorers has ever created. Its ecstatic highs and shivery comedowns also reflect a particularly turbulent era in the lives of Grasshopper and fellow co-founder Jonathan Donahue, of calamities both personal and physical, but also rebirths and real births (Grasshopper became a father for the first time in 2014). "It was one of those otherworldly life sequences, when everything you think is solid turns molten," explains Jonathan. "But also, when something is worth saying, it can take a long time to say it, rather than just blurt it out." As Grasshopper once commented about Deserter's Songs, "It's special because that was the one that brought us back from the brink." The Light In You is special for that very same reason.