When you create a record so beguiling and iconic as Mercury Rev's 1998 masterpiece "Deserter's Songs" it can become a guilded cage. 

What next? Will anyone listen? Does the golden moment become a self imposed exile from a meaningful future?

For Mercury Rev it would seem so.


I've been tracing the fault lines of their attempt to sketch a future beyond "Deserter's Songs"

They deserve that at the very least.

Unsurprisingly, they've found it challenging to reach the summit again.

Sometimes you can only climb so high just once. 

"Snowflake In a Hot World" is an audacious attempt to get back there. 

You can't say they didn't give their all. 

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