In uncharted musical territory

When the critics are calling your new album a masterpiece, you can expect a big audience at your only Irish gig. So it was that Mercury Rev found themselves faced with a capacity crowd at the Mean Fiddler, and it's to their credit that the Buffalo, New York, band rose to the occasion and delivered a superb, shining set of atmospheric, alternative tunes. The Wexford Street venue was so stuffed with punters, it was hard to hear fragile songs like Endlessly and Holes, but if you fought your way to the front, you were rewarded with a torrent of feedback and an almost unbearable surfeit of classical-tinged melodies.

Mercury Rev's fourth album, Deserter's Songs, is indeed a masterpiece, and many doubted if the band could recreate the aching, evocative sounds of songs such as Opus 40.

They needn't have worried: lead singer Jonathan Donahue and lead guitarist Sean "Grasshopper" Mackiowiak led a tightly-knit group of musicians through uncharted musical territory, discovering new rock 'n' roll treasures with every imaginative riff. After a tentative beginning, the band quickly found its feet, and Mercury Rev tore through the aural undergrowth with the skill of seasoned explorers. This wasn't rock 'n' roll - it was something far more interesting than that, and the more attentive members of the audience shared in a collective sense of wonder, breathing in every distorted guitar sound and every orchestral synth arrangement like life-affirming dust.

Mercury Rev's roots are firmly based in country music, but they pushed beyond the narrow boundaries of y' alternative to come up with something that was both beautiful and brash. At one stage, they even conjured up the ghost of John Lennon, with echoing vocals and descending keyboard scales; they also paid tribute to Neil Young with a shimmering version of Cortez The Killer. Older songs from their second album, Boces, added some necessary edge to their sound, but it was new songs like Goddess On A Hiway which really proved their roadworthiness.