Mercury Rev Uncovers Pop Roots

The first sounds from veteran band Mercury Rev at the El Rey Theatre on Tuesday were the opening Mellotron notes of the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” which shape the group’s own “Tonite It Shows.” That was just the start.

In the course of the evening came a guitar quote from the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica,” an excursion evoking Pink Floyd’s “Breathe,” a passage resembling Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” and a song that seemed to marry Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” with John Lennon’s “Mind Games.” By the time the Buffalo-rooted sextet encored with Young’s “Cortez the Killer,” it took a minute to be sure it actually was the classic and not an original modeled on it.

Yet there was no lack of creativity from the band, which will tour this summer as R.E.M.’s opening act. Rev, though reverential, seems to come from some world out of time. This isn’t a revivalist act; this is the house band on pop’s ghost ship.

Lush and moving, at times overlapping Radiohead and Spiritualized, the musical tapestry matches Donahue’s lyrics, freezing transitory, fleeting moments of romantic melancholy in a state of permanent impermanence--the very state of seemingly disposable pop’s own transcendence.