Mercury Rev

Electric Ballroom, London
Rating: ****
Mercury Rev
Mercury Rev

Ever the teases, Mercury Rev save their best until the end. Singer Jonathan Donahue - who has actually put a jacket on for the encore - has already crooned the delicate verses and wafted across the quiet chorus of The Dark is Rising. Silent, he stands with his arms outstretched in Jesus Christ pose, backlit as if by Werner Herzog. Behind him, his five band-mates pound out a keyboard-led mini-symphony. It would almost be prog were anyone to contemplate taking a solo. It looks heroic; it sounds divine.

On record, Mercury Rev merge multi-instrumental complexity with simple, almost nursery-rhyme melody. Live, the departed Suzanne Thorpe's flutes are missed terribly. Intricate constructions are lost, as they hurtle through Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp and the new, ferociously drummed You're My Queen, seemingly determined to rob them of nuance. But Mercury Rev's actual performance is subtle. At first glance, Donahue is an off-kilter frontman. He neither dances nor makes any concessions to rock'n'roll, yet he is every bit as orthodox and engaging as Fran Healy. He glides around the music, clutching his microphone at knee-level or waiting for three and a half minutes of Tonite It Shows before playing the guitar that had been dangling redundantly around his neck. It is not much to speak of, yet Donahue does it with charisma.

Before the glorious ending, they had already scaled peaks. The keeningly intelligent Goddess on a Hiway remains worthy of being whistled on building sites, while Holes and Opus 40 sound significant without being self-important. Indeed, everything Mercury Rev do is a balancing act: that they never quite topple over is laudable.

• Mercury Rev play Leeds festival (020-7344 0044) on August 24, then tour.

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