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Mercury Rev lynchpin Jonathan Donahue describes this album as “a self-organising dance of stillness rising on a delicate sharp edge of dissolution.” Admirably lyrical, but a little unhelpful as a guide to grasping the unfashionably fulsome beauty of the Rev, who have always won our psych-pop affections over Flaming Lips, even if our attention has wandered since 1998’s Deserter’s Songs. Gilded, orchestral grandiosity has long been the Rev’s bag, with many of their songs sounding like Disney show tunes for the E generation. Here, they’ve dipped their brushes into the same iridescent shimmer, but are no longer painting by numbers. Dreamy avant-pop is offset by throbbing ambient house and proggy neoclassicism; if the Rev’s universe once turned in tandem with Pink Floyd and Frank Churchill, it’s now tuned into Prefuse 73 and Danny Elfman too. “There’s no bliss like home,” sings Donahue. Maybe not, but there’s clearly magic in exploration, too. Sharon O’Connell