Mercury Rev at Sleeping Village, 9.14.22

Mercury Rev at Sleeping Village, 9.14.22

In Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, nestled into one of the fastest growing blocks of the city, is Sleeping Village, a relatively new bar and music venue. Like many of Chicago’s club-sized locales, the venue itself is hidden in the back, discreetly tucked into the end of a hallway, far enough away from the open-concept, foodless-gastropub, and beer garden aesthetic of the front. On Wednesday night, as Mercury Rev made its way back to Chicago, the bar had become a singular entity, everyone was there for the same reason.

Back in April, Mercury Rev was set to support Brian Jonestown Massacre at their show at The Vic, a billing that could have easily been flip-flopped. Unfortunately, the band had to bow out at the last moment, due to a COVID infection within the touring group, and many who attended (this reviewer included) were understandably frustrated. To their credit, Jonathan Donahue, Grasshopper, and company were quick to return to Chicago, and luckily at a much more intimate venue.

As the crowd filed into the back room, Cleveland, Ohio group Niights were performing a set that could have fit in pretty well at a Twin Peaks roadhouse. Performing as a duo with Frankie Maraldo on guitar and Jenna Fournier on vocals, the band brought its hazy dream pop to a crowd that was plenty receptive. At points during their set, especially on the tracks that leaned into their noisier shoegaze side, the band evoked Yerself Is Steam-era Mercury Rev, and were all the better for it. However, the group was also hindered throughout its performance by issues with Fournier’s vocals, most likely resulting from mixing issues in the small venue. Regardless, the group was plenty charismatic and especially keen to open for a band they cited as a major influence.

With Niights finishing up at 8:45, it seemed conventional wisdom would place Mercury Rev’s start time at around 9:15 or 9:30, but as much of the crowd was socializing on the patio, the familiar boom baps of the pre-show audio techs began to leak out of the back room. By 9:05 the group had started, opening with a rousing take on “The Funny Bird” which Jonathan Donahue delivered in a characteristic, vaudevillian theatricality. For the most part, the vocal issues had been addressed, although when Donahue sang at his loudest, he was still pushing the limits of the mix.

They quickly followed their opener with “Tonite It Shows”, another track taken from the beloved Deserter’s Songs and a fan favorite. It also gave the band a chance to spread its legs and depart from the Donahue show, with Grasshopper leading the group in an extended jam in the outro and giving the song a nice shoegazy tinge, before moving into the follow-up “Autumn’s in the Air”.

Throughout the show, Mercury Rev sprinkled in a few covers to ensure some diversity among their heavily sampled fourth record. The group’s take on Bob Dylan’s late-career master stroke “Love Sick” was effective and despite the obvious possible shortfalls, featured Donahue doing an impression of the elderly Dylan’s croon, and pulling it off surprisingly well. The band also provided a version of “There You Are” a song originally recorded while Donahue was a part of the Flaming Lips.

On the All Is Dream highlight “Tides of the Moon”, Donahue took the breezy, atmospheric track and unlike the album version, placed himself front and center. With the lyrics and showmanship up front ahead of the instrumentation, Donahue took to dancing and waving his arms as if he were flying, whenever the song mentioned said flying. With his double-breasted velour jacket and matching newsies cap, he added a riveting eclecticism that was only threatened by Marion Genser’s top hat, which as a keyboardist, made her look more than a little like Leon Russell.

As the set came to a close, the group shuffled through their string of hits, “Goddess of the Hiway”, “Holes”, “Opus 40” and eventually finished with “The Dark is Rising”, the first track from All Is Dream and their current requisite closer. In its operatic, preciousness, Donahue captured everything important about Mercury Rev, a band that moved from shoegaze into a cosmic pop that was singular in its time and still is today. The entire night he had a big, goofy smile plastered on his face, despite this being the umpteenth time he had played these tracks to a crowd; they still sounded fresh, and he was still ecstatic to provide them. Part of that comes from the nature of the tracks and how closely they’re intertwined with Donahue himself, and part of that may be because the crowd was smiling straight back at him. Either way, the band closed the set after that and didn’t look back. There was no encore, and no one minded, instead, Donahue and Grasshopper moved to the back of the room and signed and sold merch for the rest of the night, something we probably wouldn’t have gotten at the BJM show.