Once upon a time, these upstate New Yorkers seemed hell-bent on launching themselves into the outer realms of the solar system with their wide-open space-rock jams and interstellar lyrics. As The Secret Migration proves, they're far more comfortable on terra firma these days -- so much so that they've made this concept album something of an homage to Mother Nature. The band's sound is still remarkably lush, still undeniably "psychedelic," but -- on songs like the pastoral, piano-laced "Secret for a Song" -- there's a newfound warmth, a sense of hominess that could only come from a long stretch nestled in the middle of nowhere. That adds to the burnished beauty of "Across Yer Ocean," which follows a parabolic arc that recalls nothing so much as a rainbow rising over a mist-shrouded hillside. Nature motifs pop up again and again here, but they're not uniformly bucolic, as evidenced by the sinister guitar lines that Grasshopper plunges into the heart of "Black Forest (Lorelei)." As ever, the band pay very close attention to detail, particularly in the disc's sequencing, gradually ramping up tempos and volume, peaking on the Spector-esque "In a Funny Way" and again on the tympani-powered "Arise." Rev mainman Jonathan Donohue has never been shy about stretching for things that seem to be out of his reach, but that willingness to risk a psychic spill -- and the ability to transform those emotional skinned knees into beautiful music -- is what makes the band so special.
