Mercury Rev announce second London show following rave reviews for new album "Born Horses" || Autumn UK tour begins this weekend!

Following rave reviews for their new album Born Horses, and about arrive on these shores for UK tour dates, Mercury Rev have announced news of a second London show for March 2025. With their first London show at EartH having long-since sold out, the band have announced a second show in the capital at Islington Assembly Hall the following night. Upcoming UK tour dates below:

Saturday 2nd November - Norwich - Arts Centre

Sunday 3rd November - Bristol - Trinity

Monday 4th November - Newcastle - Boiler Shop

Wednesday 6th November - Glasgow - The Garage

Thursday 7th November - Leeds - Brudenell Social Club

Friday 8th November – Cambridge - Junction

Saturday 9th November - Brighton - Mutations Festival

2025:

Thursday 13th March - Liverpool - Content

Fruday 14th March - Manchester - New Century Hall

Saturday 15th March – Nottingham – Rescue Rooms

Monday 17th March – Portsmouth – Wedgewood Rooms

Tuesday 18th March - London – EartH *(SOLD OUT)*

Wednesday 19th March – London – Islington Assembly Hall

Acclaim for Born Horses:

“Epic music with a widescreen grandeur... Born Horses is an example of Mercury Rev at their best, creating a new world.” Sunday Times – 4 stars **** (Album of the Week)

“A lush and serene return... the US rock band’s first album of new material since 2015 finds them in dreamy, reflective mode.” The Observer – 4 stars ****

“Their most otherworldly journey yet... another artistic leap from a band who have made evolution a calling card.” Record Collector – 4 stars **** (Album of the Month)

“With this late-period beauty Mercury Rev have hit the cosmic balance perfectly.” MOJO – 4 stars ****

“Remarkably evocative... Mercury Rev are bona fide sonic explorers.” The Sun – 9/10

“Born Horses feels like a logical progression, the band’s luscious drift blossoming into widescreen vignettes of love, loss and revelation, delivered with poise.” The Wire

“The band’s chamber-pop soundbaths are punctuated by rhythmic hooks and ear-catching lines, as on “Patterns’, which namechecks Joy Division and Jackson Pollock, or ‘Bird Of No Address’,

when a Cohen-esque hint of a topline melody reels us in.” Uncut – 7/10

“Evocative and mind-blowing, with the wonderful Born Horses Mercury Rev have fashioned their own cosmos.” The Arts Desk – 4 stars ****

“An epic psych beauty, up there with the classic Deserter’s Songs.” Louder Than War – 5 stars ***** (Album of the Week)

“We’ve come to expect the unexpected from Mercury Rev... Like its evocative cover image of horses in traffic, Born Horses opens new worlds to the imagination.” PROG

“Mesmerizing... Born Horses is an album to love and treasure.” Americana UK – 8/10

“Sonic voyagers return with first new songs in nine years, their sense of magic and wonder very much still in place.” MusicOMH – 4 stars ****

“Born Horses is an elegant and magical album that only Mercury Rev could have made.” Echoes & Dust

“Epic yet intimate, Born Horses is Mercury Rev’s bravest release since Deserter’s Songs.” Buzz Magazine – 4 stars ****

“Whispered journeys of the soul... the gathering instrumentation welcomes you into a stirring and emotive world.” Far Out – 7/10

“A dreamy experience... Mercury Rev dance around the areas of psychedelia, jazz, ambient, folk and whatever else they throw into the mix.” Classic Rock – 7/10

Mercury Rev shared the singles “Patterns”, “Ancient Love” and “A Bird Of No Address” from the album.

In upstate New York, deep in the seam between the Catskill Mountains and the Hudson Valley, a richly swelling, spellbound sound emerges, eddying and flowing like the local Esopus Creek, or in the slipstream of the grander Hudson River, carrying the flotsam and jetsam of our hopes, dreams, and fears. A sound composed of organic and electronic; guitars, keys, brass, strings, woodwind, drums - and a voice of incantations, tapping streams of consciousness that similarly eddy and flow.

Spiritually, literally, psycho-geographically: where else does Mercury Rev’s ninth album Born Horses spring from? This cascade of gleaming, glistening psych-jazz-folk-baroque-ambient quest that searches its soul but can never truly know the answer? A sound and vision begun with skeletal chords and surges of self-reflection, alive to the notions and motions of time and reality somehow both linked to their exalted past whilst quite unlike anything they have created before?’’

Grasshopper: “When Jonathan and I first met, one thing we bonded over was Blade Runner, both Ridley Scott’s film and Vangelis’ soundtrack: that feel of the past and the future, the haunting noir mood and the romance of the future…Born Horses taps into some of that. Looking back to childhood, to Broadway tunes, to lonesome blues, Chet Baker, Miles Davis’ Sketches Of Spain, records that our parents listened to, but we put a twist into the future. From the beginning, Mercury Rev were on a cusp, between analogue and digital, hi-fi and lo-fi at the same time. It was like Brecht or Weill, the words suggesting visuals, and the visuals suggesting moods. We also thought a lot about the desert on this record, and the urban desert.”

Jonathan Donahue: “When I opened my voice to sing on this record, this was the bird that sang: a lower, whiskery voice, which surprised me as much as it may others. I don’t know where the bird came from, but it’s there now, and I don’t question it. It’s just the bird that wants to sing.”

Since forming in 1989, Mercury Rev has made a career out of boldly exploring the fringes of artistic perception, channelling colours and sounds and visions that always seem just beyond our mortal reach. The Guardian hailed the group as “a rarity in indie rock: a band who have continually evolved their sound, pushing at the boundaries of what rock music actually means over 25 years, borrowing from jazz, funk, doo-wop, techno, folk and more along the way,” while Rolling Stone praised their “majestic chaos”. The band’s 1991 debut, ‘Yerself Is Steam,’ landed on Pitchfork’s rundown of the Best Shoegaze Albums of All Time, and their 1998 breakthrough, ‘Deserter’s Songs,’ was named NME’s Album of the Year upon its release. Major festival and television performances around the world solidified their status as that rare group capable of straddling the line between mainstream appeal and progressive musical and technological experimentation.

Born Horses artwork and tracklist:

1. Mood Swings

2. Ancient Love

3. Your Hammer, My Heart

4. Patterns

5. A Bird Of No Address

6. Born Horses

7. Everything I Thought I Had Lost

8. There’s Always Been A Bird In Me