Mercury Rev‘s secret low-key show – attended mostly by press and music industry people – at London’s Sound Republic (Monday January 18) was a lacklustre affair, mainly due to the meat locker-style atmosphere of the venue.
“Can you turn the lights down, I’ve just woken up”, announced Jonathan Donahue to the crowd at ‘The Man’s’ favourite rock palace.
‘Holes’ and ‘Goddess On A Highway’ from ‘Deserters Songs’ were the highlights of a show that ended in stool rock cover version hell and a cover of Bacharach & David‘s ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’.
“We’re going to do some songs and then some songs we actually like”, Donahue announced before settling down into stool rock mode and covering ‘Motion Pictures’ from Neil Young‘s hard-to-find ‘On The Beach’ album, ‘Silver Street’ by The Jacobites and Bob Dylan‘s ‘He Was A Friend Of Mine’.
But as a warm-up show for their headline slot at the NME Premier Astoria show (January 21), this was all very nice. Let’s hope they can warm up just a little bit more by then.
Standing up would probably help.
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