I guess it had to be expected. The last time we bumped into Mew was 2005’s glorious And the Glass Handed Kites, a prog-influenced journey full of crooks, twists, wildly swinging song sections and all sorts of other weird tricks – an album that despite all those tricks was a tremendously instantly affecting masterpiece. Now the band’s back with an album that’s been touted as one of their most upbeat and directly poppy albums. It only serves right that this album would end up being a total grower.

But come on, did anyone expect anything normal from this band in the first place?

Too proggy to be pop, too poppy to be prog, it’s No More Stories/Are Told Today/I’m Sorry/They Washed Away//No More Stories/The World Is Grey/I’m Tired/Let’s Wash Away!

And it is true, it is Mew’s poppiest album. All tinkling melodies and big choruses. But because this is Mew and being Mew requires that you follow the rules of the very existence of Mew, it’s a… weirder sort of pop album. For an example, take the opening track “New Terrain”. It’s a nifty song but for its whole duration it sounds a bit… odd. Then you realise that it’s because that half of its sounds are played backwards and there’s in fact a second vocal line that’s also sung backwards. If you flip the song over in an audio editing program, it turns into a wholely different thing with even its own name (”Nervous”).  It also introduces the album very well. Yes, this is a band known from such uncomplicated awesome should-be-hits as “Mica” and they’ve now decided to embrace that side, but they’re still Mew and they go on about their own, very unique ways to reach that goal.

(Incidentally, I’ve found that Nervous makes a rather great unofficial ending track to the album. Try it. Fits niftily as an outro)

The lead giveaways “Introducing Palace Players” and “Repeaterbeater” are played right at the beginning of the album and they still work brilliantly, and especially the latter has managed to become a right choooon over repeated exposure with that hell of a killer chorus.  The three-minute “Beach” that’s dropped in-between the two songs works well as a bridge as it combines the awesome keyboards of the former with the hurried beat of the latter, crafting a wonderfully upbeat little piece of sunshine for the late summer. Elsewhere “Silas the Magic Car” namechecks the band’s drummer with a cute, low-tempo singalong stroll while “Hawaii” sounds like Mew covering an unreleased Arcade Fire song, featuring an infectious xylophone melody and a gigantic, anthemic stadium orgasm feel, alternating between the subtly groovy and bombastically grand. “Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy” makes such clichéd statements as its title line and “here we go, here we go” chorus-build-up sound thoroughly convincing and most importantly awesomely addicting, giving the listener an end-of-the-album diamond that screams of a hit single (which then lulls away with a weird lullaby-like tone as sung by a magical gnome). “Vaccine” bursts through the scene with wonderful vocal melodies and an undeniably awesome drive.

All these took time however. It’s been what, a week or so, since the leak first happened and during this week I’ve listened to the album probably somewhere close to 12 times if not more. At first listen very little that I didn’t already know raised their head much but as the listens start to count up, you start to actually deeply focus in the sounds and begin to give individual songs their own repeat moments, everything begins to form its shape. Then you start to wonder how the hell did such an ultimately ridiculously catchy song even take time to grow. And that’s the magic of Mew. Their weird little fairy-tale apocalypse pop / flying rug ride stadium rock  that spins and twirls so much that even their concept of an uncomplicated, upbeat and instant album is enchantingly wonky.

But I’d lie if I said that everything sounds perfect. For one, there’s the two interludes (or Intermezzos or smaller size copies of the album cover) that, while only take a minute and half of total time, still sound pointless – it’s a pet peeve of mine. But as a bigger thing there’s both the centrepiece highlight “Cartoons and Macramé Wounds” and the closing “Reprise”. Cartoons is the longest song on the album and it’s a bombastic ballad – this album’s “Zookeeper’s Boy” or “She Came Home for Christmas” – but for all its star-lit grandiose it doesn’t really say much or offer anything that would make its sky-scraping size anything more than a default method of songwriting for this band. “Reprise” on the other hand is a mood-piece that starts out with a blast and then spends the rest of the track growing (shrinking?) more and more minimalistic – a cool idea but unfortunately a relatively forgettable song that doesn’t do the album justice as a closing track.

Based on the opinions I’ve seen around the net, No More Stories Yadda Yadda Blah Blah And So On Copy Paste seems to be really dividing opinions – some practically declaring it to be the second coming of Christ while others dismiss it immediately by saying it doesn’t live up to the band’s previous efforts. We’re still half a year away from all the “best of 09″ lists that will be cropping up in the future but I would be very, very surprised if No More Stories didn’t end up appearing in the vast majority of them.  The patronising “give it time, it’ll grow” comments aside, No More Stories is a surprise hit that will surely end up being one of the stand-out albums of the year with its crazy, unhinged yet ludicrously catchy songs. And, as always with Mew, it sounds like it’s entirely from its very own world. And it’s ridiculously addictive.

MP3: Hawaii
MP3: Repeaterbeater

(No More Stories will be released all around August depending on where you live – pre-order your copy from Amazon! US / UK)

Tags: Mew

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.