All Is Dream by Mercury Rev

All Is Dream, Mercury Rev's fifth studio album, came out on V2 in late summer 2001, reaching American shops on September 11, and it follows on from Deserter's Songs. Dave Fridmann produced, and Jonathan Donahue and Grasshopper Mackowiak, the two constants in the Buffalo band's shifting lineup, go even further into the lush and the uncanny.

This is chamber pop dressed for a dream: orchestral swells rise and fall away, psychedelic haze hangs over everything, and Donahue's quavering voice drifts through it like a sleepwalker telling you a fairy tale. "The Dark Is Rising" is the grand centerpiece, all sweep and creeping dread. Even the sleeve is in on the mood: it uses half of Breakthrough Dreaming, a 1991 painting by artist and mystic Jennifer Hathaway.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.