MEW

Line-up: Jonas Bjerre (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Silas Graae Jørgensen (drums), Bo Madsen (guitar), Johan Wohlert (bass and later guitar). Wohlert left in 2006 but returned back in 2013, Madsen departed for good in 2015, and in 2024 Bjerre announced his departure, effectively ending the band.

My full blossoming into a hapless music nerd happened in the early 2000s (which shouldn't come as any surprise if you pay attention to when many of the artists featured here were active...) and I regularly had my mind blown in various degrees throughout that period as different artists and different types of music arrived in my radar and exposed me to methods of expression that felt brand new to me. One of those was the first time a video from Mew appeared on TV, and what at first sounded like a generally interesting slice of artsier rock soon became downright captivating when the voice appeared: that high, almost genderless vocal that expressed so much melody and emotion while sounding so otherwordly and unlike anything I had heard in front of music like this. When the song itself kept changing shape in unexpected ways, it added to the effect - this was something completely unique and I needed to hear more.

For much of the wider world, including the bulk of the Nordics, Mew seemingly came out of nowhere ca. 2003 but the truth is they had already been an active point of interest in their native Denmark since the late 1990s. Mew had come together as a melting pot of four very different musical personalities who found a shared interest in exploring that fascinating Venn diagram overlap between their respective circles, and their first two albums were released in Denmark alone on a relatively small domestic label. The latter of these, 2000's Half the World Is Watching Me, in particular began to attract attention outside their native country and Mew soon signed a worldwide deal with Sony. For their major label debut, 2003's Frengers the band made the decision to re-record a number of their back catalogue favourites (and songs that deserved better than to be forgotten on albums most people would never hear) alongside some new songs, and I'll get to that in more detail further down this page. But Frengers broke them through all over the place and for the remainder of the 2000s, Mew became one of blogosphere indie's ("indie's", I know - major label and all) Big Name Acts whose every move and album was waited for with an excited breath. Especially so as you truly could never know what would happen next.

Mew, you see, pulled a lot of their magic from their uncompromisingly erratic whimsy that they never dulled down even as they got on a big label roster: in fact, they got even weirder during their Sony tenure. Mew's music is where the fervorous energy of punk and metal shook hands with the melodies and open-armedness of the sweetest pop music, while the neurotic time signature switches of math rock made perfect bedfellows with the most arena-seeking choruses of alternative rock. They were pop and prog but in a way that blended them together until they really were one, and not just one genre with guest features from the other. Mew threw in a myriad of wildly different ideas and the kitchen sink into every album and often every song, fearlessly and proudly creating music that was larger than life both in its vision as well as in its execution: expect regular gigantic crescendos, boldly soaring choruses and humongous explosions of sound. But all these ideas were also put together seamlessly by a stunningly skillful set of musicians who could swiftly and naturally move from style to style, and the end result is something that could only be described as Mew's own, so much so that their early 2000s works absolutely serve as a comparison and a touchpoint for so many other Nordic acts since who followed in their footsteps, though never with the same gusto. Mew also had the benefit of having the aforementioned voice of Jonas Bjerre, whose yearning dreamland vocals added another layer of unique flavour into the music. His characteristically high range lands on the right side of syrupy sweet and transcends quirkiness by becoming a truly evocative tool in the band's arsenal, alongside the oft-surrealistic lyrics that the voice carried. Mew didn't sound like they were really from the same world as all their peers, and that's what made them so magical.

Mew were primarily active around the first decade of the new millennium and then slowly started winding down. Extracurricular activities like family life began to took priority, the band took long hiatuses to the point that each new release felt like an unexpected comeback, and in-between members both left and returned for specific cycles, not out of any bad blood but simply to pursue life's other paths for a while. Mew had arguably said all they had to say in the first fifteen years or so of their career and though that's not dismissive of their later works, it's inarguable that there's less of them and the band simply wasn't a priority anymore for the four members. In autumn 2024, shortly after I started doing these reviews, the then-trio band once again reactivated out of nowhere but only to say that Bjerre had decided to leave the band - which effectively meant the final, conclusive end to the band's uncertain later years. It's made the project to review their discography oddly bittersweet in a fashion (not going to lie, I thought at first they were going to announce a new album and disrupt my review schedule!), but it's also been a powerful reminder of just how special Mew were when they were around. I've bandied the word "unique" a lot in this intro (and erased it several times more in an attempt to not repeat myself), but they truly were something of their own, and their relatively short discography is a truly imaginative journey.

Main chronology:

• 1997: A Triumph for Man
• 2000: Half the World Is Watching Me
• 2003: Frengers
• 2005: And the Glass Handed Kites
• 2009: No More Stories...
• 2015: +-
• 2017: Visuals

CD singles:

• 2003: Comforting Sounds
• 2003: Am I Wry? No
• 2003: She Came Home for Christmas
• 2005: Special
• 2006: Why Are You Looking Grave?
• 2006: The Zookeeper's Boy
• 2009: No More Stories EP

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A TRIUMPH FOR MAN

1) Wheels Over Me; 2) Beautiful Balloon; 3) Wherever; 4) Panda; 5) Then I Run; 6) Life Is Not Distant; 7) No Shadow Kick; 8) Snowflake; 9) She Came Home for Christmas; 10) Pink Monster; 11) I Should Have Been a Tsin-Tsi (For You); 12) How Things Turn Out to Be; 13) Web; 14) Coffee Break
2006 Reissue Bonus Disc: 1) Studio Snippet #1; 2) Say You're Sorry; 3) Beautiful Balloon (Acoustic); 4) Web (Demo); 5) Chinese Gun (Demo); 6) Studio Snippet #2; 7) I Should Have Been a Tsin-Tsi (For You) (Demo); 8) Wheels Over Me (Demo); 9) Superfriends (Demo)

Eccentric debut full of raw talent and inspiration, introducing the band's unique personality immediately with lower stakes but just as captivating musical material.

There's a bit in the liner notes for the 2006 reissue of A Triumph of Man about the four different personalities that made up Mew in the studio, recording their debut album: Wohlert favoured the more easily digestible approaches, Bjerre leaned towards "weird softness", Jorgensen pushed towards heavier and harsher sounds and Madsen was the diplomatic assimilator in the middle. What should have been a clash of ideas and directions instead formed a fifth personality entirely, that of Mew as an unified entity which balanced all these instincts. This melting pot of perspectives is perhaps most apparent on the quirky and unfiltered debut. It's an album which bears the sound of a band on the verge of a vision of something and not entirely sure where they should be taking that vision or which fragments to expand, but every single decision they make is uniformly, unarguably and most of all uniquely theirs.

A Triumph for Man is a little scruffy and definitely low-key, with its production which borders on lo-fi aesthetically even if not practically and the audible vibe of a passion project dreamed up in small bedrooms and smaller stages that's about to turn into reality. Between the lines of you can hear what Mew would eventually grow up to become: the cinematically dreamy (and slyly dark) power ballad "She Came Home for Christmas" would eventually be brought back for Frengers and this initial version is about 90% of its grandiose future self already, and in the stadium-fantasising choruses of "Wherever" and the evocative strings of the acoustic and unexpectedly delicate "Snowflake" you can hear the band's future big screen theatrical sensibilities. They're great, predictable as that may be: among the album's best songs. But it's what they're sitting next to that's the most fascinating aspect of the debut. A Triumph for Man is as indebted to 90s shoegaze and slacker rock as it is to twee pop, and the band are throwing these influences in left, right and center as they form what can only be described as the Mew sound. There's some Swirlies DNA involved courtesy of producer and Swirlies member Damon Tutunjian, but the final concoction is Mew's own. That's in no small part thanks to Bjerre's everything from the falsetto-prone voice and melodic ideas to his idiosyncratic lyrics, and when paired with these often surprisingly noisy and heavy textures ("Then I Run", "Panda" and "Wherever" in particular) it's surrealistically beautiful. As if to prove a point, sometimes Mew simply put all of everything into an intrigue-piqueing blender and out comes mirror universe indie hits like "Wheels Over Me" and "Web" which alternative between hits of alternative rock guitars and feather-light frolicing in a genuinely exciting manner.

The other unique flair to A Triumph for Man is the abundance of more overwhelmingly off-kilter ideas that take a step away from what you thought the general vibe would be. That means the existence of not only the various interludes of varying degrees of novelty (the pretty "Life Is Not Distant", the shambling Halloween parade "Pink Monster", the warbling a cappella of "How Things Turn Out to Be"), but also the bouncy bubblegum pop of "No Shadow Kick" where Bjerre sings in a made-up facsimile of Chinese and/or Japanese, like someone singing along to a song in a language they don't know. "I Should Have Been a Tsin-Tsi (For You)" is something close to an early Mew signature song and its whimsical fairytale twee is potently disarming, so much so that it's a stand-out from day one and it's no wonder it hung around for years afterwards: the bursts of sharp falsettos, bright acoustic guitars and its giddily brisk pace is fiersomely adorable as well as dangerously catchy (and no, I don't know what a tsin-tsi is either but I'm picturing a chinchilla-like creature). These strains of thought would eventually get either ironed out or infused into the overall vision, but it's fun to hear them run unshackled here in all of their admittably novelty nature. It's also simply great to hear songs like these interact with the heftier (emotionally or sonically) material, bringing in contrast as much as they highlight the surprising amount of similarities.

A Triumph for Man is slightly rough around the edges - but not like it's left raw, but rather in an untamed manner. It's a testament to the band's imagination and creativity as much as the later, more refined albums: the unique Mew formula is already present and accounted for. Plus, while for the bulk of the review I've been focusing on the sound and whimsy of it all, it's worth just pointing out that the actual writing too is really good all across the album: these songs have strong melodies, great dramatic and emotional arcs and attention-grabbing arrangements. Bjerre's lyrics are no more or less evocatively nonsensical than at any point later and he can already make a line like "I'll try to like horses" (the chorus of the album highlight "Panda") sound like a puncturing sentence that means something and hits with intent, even if the actual meaning is unclear. It's a really fascinating debut album that derives its power both from how much it shares with the albums and how little it does, introducing Mew as unique force of nature. You could maybe make it an even better album by tidying up some of the ramshackliness and sprawl, but that might also end up sacrificing some of its personality. It's rare to hear a debut album where the artist in question has such a distinctively characteristic voice of their own, but the often chaotic but equally exciting smörgåsbord of ideas Mew play with here really is impressive, even if you were to hear this after any of the more famous albums.

The 2006 reissue comes with a bonus disc that which neatly expands upon Mew's early days and wraps up some loose threads. The original demo albums haven't been included in full but instead you get a curated selection of the most interesting material in them: the demo-exclusive songs "Chinese Gun" (fairly throwaway) and "Superfriends" (raw potential), the more chilled-out early version of "Tsin-Tsi" (with some delightfully soft keyboards in place of the big guitar riff rev-up) and more raucous interpretations of "Web" and "Wheels Over Me". There's also a nice acoustic version of "Beautiful Balloon" and, as if to mimic the album's interludes, a few random snippets of studio banter which are unnecessary but cute. The most tantalising inclusion for the established fans is the sole studio outtake of the album, "Say You're Sorry" which according to the liner notes Tutunjan was batting for hard, but ultimately lost the fight with the band and "She Came Home for Christmas" was picked for the album instead. It's a mesmerisingly meandering six minutes of the most textural set of shoegaze guitars across the album, a plaintive cello and Bjerre's wistful vocals - and though I think the band made the right choice between the two songs, it could have easily found a comfortable home on the album and would have been a potential showstopper. It's a small set of extras, but plentiful regardless of length.

Physically: Standard 2-CD jewel case. The liner notes feature a number of photo collages, all the lyrics (apart from "No Shadow Kick", sadly enough), and both studio diary snippets and general reminiscing from Tutunjan which explores the context and details the time in the studio in a candidly honest manner.

[Reviewed: 05/09/2024]

HALF THE WORLD IS WATCHING ME

1) Am I Wry? No; 2) Mica; 3) Saliva; 4) King Christian; 5) Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years; 6) 156; 7) Symmetry; 8) Comforting Sounds
2007 Reissue Bonus Disc: 1) Half the World Is Watching Me; 2) Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years (Live 2001); 3) Mica (Live 2001); 4) Wheels Over Me (Live 2001); 5) Wherever (Live 2001); 6) 156 (Cubase Demo); 7) Quietly (Demo); 8) Comforting Sounds (Do I Look Puerto Rican?) (Demo)

A massive artistic and sonical transformation - and a weird historic relic through no fault of its own.

The unexpected complication that comes with reviewing Mew's discography in order (which I am doing) is that unless you are one of the increasingly small number of people who first heard Half the World Is Watching Me when it was released in Denmark in 2000, you will in all likelihood be coming into this after first hearing Frengers, just like I did. It is no great secret that Mew re-recorded a number of songs from their existing back catalogue for their international "debut" album, five of which come from this album: that's a whopping 62.5% of the tracklist here (and for added fun, two of the remaining songs were re-recorded as b-sides for Frengers). That has a huge impact on how you perceive this album because try as you might to force yourself to think otherwise, it's always going to be the one with all the weirdly unfamiliar versions of the deeply familiar songs from "Frengers". It's difficult to consider Half the World Is Watching Me simply as an album unto itself, as a cohesive piece of work intended to be its own statement rather than just an echo of another.

But maybe it wasn't a statement like that to begin with. Mew spent the next couple of years after A Triumph for Man in a flux: back-and-forth with their label delayed the start of the recording process and in the meantime, the band wrote songs, demoed them, scrapped the demos with a different set of demos and restlessly shuffled through material uncertain of what they ultimately wanted album #2 to ultimately sound like. When they finally arrived at the end of the Half the World Is Watching Me studio sessions (mostly self-produced with some help from Flemming Rasmussen), they scrapped and buried a handful of the songs they'd finished to arrive at the eight that make up the tracklist today. Mew weren't necessarily a band in crisis at this stage, but they were certainly one that was being very indecisive and when they did finally find the right inspiration, they seemingly foregoed the idea of everything fitting neatly together as long as the songs themselves stood up proudly. Whilst it is only eight songs (not counting the ambient sketch "Ending" hidden in the pregap of track 1) it's a wildly diverse bunch and almost haphazardly put together - though part of that is undoubtedly because I'm used to hearing them in a different context, some of the transitions between songs feel so abrupt that it can't all just be in my head.

Right off the bat the changes are noticeable, though. Gone are the scruffy, lo-fi inspired guitars and beautifully noisy production, enter grand gestures and soaring hooks: the band dreamed big on the debut, here they are reaching for it. Everything's a lot more cinematic, ambitious and at times dramatic - the rough edges are gone as Mew embrace their most melodic tendencies and wrap them up in enormous choruses and lush arrangements. It's a night and day difference in comparison to the debut, and though you can trace some of this back to the first album ("She Came Home for Christmas" was pretty much the precursor to everything here) the band may as well be a completely different entity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the three songs that ultimately didn't make it to Frengers. "Mica" is heavenly bubblegum pop bliss as interpreted by an indie band, the piano-lead "Saliva" is both delicately gorgeous and whimsically giddy as it shifts between its different dramatic movements while losing touch about being a simple pop song, and "King Christian" is all tongue-in-cheek fun which may contain some seriously impressive hooks, but also has a daft spoken word section ("rapped" by the debut's producer Damon Tutunjian). They're huge, open-arms-embracing songs but also decidedly fluffy and twee and loving it - and though the first album had its softer moments they didn't have the sense of bravado and self-certainty these songs radiate. They've earned the cocksureness: "Mica" and "Saliva" especially are simply marvellous, delightfully sweet gems where the melodies are as lush as Bjerre's sugary voice, trained to perfection in the past three years as he weaponises its unique colour.

Still, the big stars are the other five songs that the band were so proud of that they brought them back a few years later to meet bigger audiences. And... I truly am sorry, but it is really impossible for me to not keep comparing these to their famous versions and I wouldn't be surprised if most people stumble onto this album purely because they want to hear how different they are - and this makes this review awkward to read if you don't have the context of Frengers first (maybe read that review first?). The truth is... these versions are not all that different from the later re-recordings for most parts. Each of the five other songs are already unmistakeably themselves, with the main difference mainly coming from how they're not as bombastic as their future versions, with some changes in minor arrangement details and lack of all the extra bells and whistles later on. "Am I Wry? No" is already a aweworthily explosive statement that flicks from vastly different segment to another while never losing track of its grand anthem status, perfectly showcasing just how massively Mew had changed in the interim years; "Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years" has a short piano epilogue waiting at the end but otherwise this dreamy sigh of a wistful dream pop song already has all its beautifully aching pieces in place, including Stina Nordenstam's backing vocals; the colossal end-of-the-world credits roll signature song "Comforting Sounds" waits at the end and though it's not quite as hair-raisingly evocative as it would be the next time around, it's mostly splitting hairs and it's already disarmingly majestic with its carefully built tension and growing, growing release. They're phenomenal songs, no matter how you dress them up and though they never stop sounding out of place in this context, that sensation is wholly forgotten when they sweep you off your feet. The biggest change occurs with "156": after the shockingly pogoing intro unique to this version, the song plays out in spirit like the re-rcorded version does, but the laidback tempo and ethereal vocal tone place it in an entirely different place emotionally. It's the only original version here that's genuinely intriguing as both an archival piece and its own piece of work, and though it took a while to get adjusted to it, the melodies are already there and impeccable. Meanwhile the tender piano ballad "Symmetry" is basically 1:1 identical with its later version, all very hauntingly gentle and lovely, and also here it perfectly demonstrates the odd track order decisions as its hushed last dance of the ball vibe is in such an awkward place between "Comforting Sounds" and "156".

It's a hard one to come to a definitive opinion on: I can't shake off the odd sense of deja vu that's not quite right because such a huge amount of this album is like it's been dragged from a different context, even though chronologically it's the other way around (all the OG Mew fans from 2000 are probably sympathising from the other perspective), and as irrational as that is that makes it feel lesser, or at least less important? But you can't deny the songs. I love Frengers and apart from the question mark that is the version of "156" presented here, all those songs are almost if not just as impressive here. Of the three other songs, "Mica" and "Saliva" are also really wonderful (especially the latter), and "King Christian" is also a fun, good number even if clearly the album's weakest relatively speaking. And when the album keeps hitting you with a hit after hit after hit, you can't really knock it too much. I'd be lying if I said I listened to Half the World Is Watching Me lots - it's definitely more of an interesting archival piece than a true stand-out album in its own coming from my highly biased perspective - but I'd also be lying if I didn't get pulled by the songs wholesale each time I do listen to it. Thanks to subsequent decisions it's become a strange museum piece oft-forgotten by most fans, but if you try to cast your mind to the start of the millennium when this was all there is and we wouldn't know anything about what's to come - well, I can only imagine it would be nothing short of an incredibly impressive transformation of a band with so much talent it can't be contained in one sound.

The 2007 re-issue bonus disc is massive let down, on the other hand. Though the four songs discarded from the album's original tracklist have and will never see the light of day (per the liner notes), this was a period where Mew released their first proper singles, which came with actual b-sides - none of which are found here, apart from the alternative demo version of "Quickly" which is thoroughly fine. Neither can you find the re-recordings of "She Came Home for Christmas" and "You Should Have Been a Tsin-Tsi" which were included in the album's initial reissue shortly after the original release. Instead, the bulk of the very short bonus disc is made out of a number of live songs which are fairly superfluous (great songs, band's in good form, but none of them are anything essential, though it's neat to hear "Wherever" starting to take its form towards the 2003 re-recording), and fairly unexciting demos where the most interesting thing is that early on "Comforting Sounds" featured the line "do I look Puerto Rican?" for some reason. The previously unreleased title track is interesting as a prospect but it's ultimately little more than a rough piano draft of a song, a nice enough intro rather than unearthed treasure. This could have been a whole lot more than it actually is, especially as there's no official b-side/rarities collection to include the additional studio material.

Physically: 2-CD jewel case. The liner notes, too, are a big step down after the first album's similar reissue: the lyrics take up most of the booklet, and the band's comments on the context and recording of the album could easily fit on one page if they were spaced differently. Half the text is almost illegible thanks to the bad font colour choice in contrast to the background. After the debut's reissue, this feels like a very last minute, throw-it-out job.

[Reviewed: 10/09/2024]

FRENGERS  

1) Am I Wry? No; 2) 156; 3) Snow Brigade; 4) Symmetry; 5) Behind the Drapes; 6) Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years; 7) Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed; 8) She Came Home for Christmas; 9) She Spider; 10) Comforting Sounds

Debut 2.0, distilling Mew's very essence into a series of gigantic songs full of heart and power (some familiar, some not).

Following Half the World Is Watching Me, Mew caught the attention of big labels and eventually signed with Epic for a worldwide record deal. The band were aware that the world outside Denmark hadn't heard their first two albums; they were also completely aware that both of those albums were full of great songs that could and should form the backbone of the band's musical oeuvre rather than be tucked away and only heard by hardcore fans seeking out expensive imports. Frengers is Mew's third album in terms of pure chronology but it would also be their de facto debut album outside their home turf and for many the first time they'd ever hear about the band, and so they made the decision to build this second introduction around what they considered to be their back catalogue classics, re-recorded from scratch for the new audiences. Frengers is defined in the booklet as "not quite friends but not quite strangers", and that's an apt way to describe this set of (mostly) re-touched old material: familiar songs which have been brought into a different context and reconfigured for it.

The "familiar" there implying, of course, that you knew the songs to begin with. Young Flint knew precisely none of that history when I first heard Frengers, which was also my first encounter with Mew in general, and unless you're one of the few who heard this after the first two albums then chances are none of the backstory will have any real significance to you either. This is because Frengers never makes a deal about its pick-n-mix origin story, and in fact it's quite the opposite: the band has taken great care in choosing which songs to bring with them to the new era and how to present them in a fashion that holds together as a singular statement, together with the brand new material. Frengers is, above anything else, Frengers - not a compilation nor a quick major label cash-in, but an album intended to stands on its own to feet as a statement. Honestly, the only reason I really bring up the origin story is to add a bit of context and continuity between my chronologically advancing reviews of Mew's back catalogue, this isn't a case similar to Half the World Is Watching Me (from which five of its eight songs are brought back here) where my perspective of the music is directly affected by the appearance of the songs elsewhere. But then, after all, the Frengers recordings are the "original" versions of these songs for me.

Given Frengers was treated as a brand new album, it also comes with a brand new sound. Mew paired up with the big shot producer Rich Costey to bring the album to life and it's a perfect match: the band wanted their second debut to radiate the big, bold aura of a band ready to conquer the world, and Costey's sensibilities know how to tap into that desire for grandeur. Half the World Is Watching Me already introduced a more confident and bombastic version of Mew and Frengers doubles down on it - the crescendos are louder, the walls of sound more colossal and the choruses more explosive. The presentation across the board has been streamlined to be more formally alt rock leaning with an emphasis on hefty layers of guitars and the muscularity of the rhythm section, with plenty of deft and finesse still within the actual songs and coming through loud and clear from underneath the sheer bulldozer power frequently in play. It's difficult to overstate just how gargantuan Frengers sounds like, in a completely positive and downright awe-striking manner: it's music fit to soundtrack the most dramatic, climactic moments in the universe but which still retains that human touch within, meaning it's perfect to fit the songs to soundtrack those moments of your life.

The trade-off is that in the pursuit of a more serious presence, Mew have brushed away many of their quirkiest affectations under the rug for now, or at least anything extra beyond what's part of the core DNA in their compositions. That means this time there's no sugar-sweet pop songs, goofy interludes or off-kilter ideas like spoken word intermissions and tap dance breakdowns; "156", which in its original form an album ago started with a giddily whimsical intro and retained a slightly twee outlook throughout, now starts straight out of the gate with moody ambient keyboard textures and altogether treats its hazier, dreamier soundscape with a more focused touch, which makes its now-razor-sharp chorus burst through with twice the effect. "156" is the outlier and receives the most drastic reimagination out of all the older material (which takes up 60% of the tracklist), whereas the rest largely receive only slight arrangement tweaks, e.g. the opening to "Am I Wry? No" now has the keyboard part there from the start and followed by a second guitar, rather than the other way around. Beyond that they all get treated with the same dynamic, larger-than-life production job which ties the album together, including the new material which is built from scratch with this mindset.

Generally speaking all the old songs brought back are perfect choices and they sound better than ever here, reaching for stellar heights while retaining an emotional connection directly with the listener; they're also all truly great songs and deserved to be brought into wider awareness. "Am I Wry? No" reprises its role as the album opener and it's perfect for both that role as well as for acting as the introduction to Mew as a whole, by showing off the mix of power and softness that Mew so perfectly balance in their sound while throwing all those sudden section switches and time signature twitches to bring the band's out-of-the-box thinking into light. "She Came Home for Christmas" was already a song so much bigger than the rest of its peers when it first appeared on the debut, and here it finally gets to reveal its true self as an earnest power ballad full of real evocative feeling, sweeping across anthemic heights sounding more beautiful than ever. In the early days "Her Voice Is Beyond Her Years" felt a little toned down compared to the rest of the album but that's precisely why it plays a pivotal role here, its breezier and more wistful sound taking a distinct turn away from the guitar walls for a little bit and in the process proving the point that it really is one of Mew's most gorgeous melodies, destined to be a diamond deep cut to discover; the quietly cinematic last-dance-of-the-ball drama of "Symmetry" similarly offers a different, more intimate shade of colour and contrast to the record and arguably making a bigger impression here than it did the first time around. The ethereal new version of "156" was the first Mew song I ever heard and today strongly stands as my favourite track by them, poignant in its haunting melancholy and lush with layers of vocals, keyboards and guitars which hypnotically thrust the song forward; the main competitor it has for that gold medal place is "Comforting Sounds", which is arguably Mew's signature song from the wider perspective. Its cascading finale - five minutes of one instrument layer introduced after another, growing in intensity and drama each loop until it all sounds like the most beautiful end of the world - is one of the most cataclysmically massive pieces of music in my library and it still takes my breath away like it's the most intimately personal piece of music you could imagine. It's the perfect closer because nothing else could follow a song the size of a small galaxy and it gives the record the triumphant finale it deserves.

The four brand new songs fall neatly in line with the reconfigured old songs. They're mighty and tall, built on towering melodies and ascents of sound which then come crashing down dramatically: if Mew wanted to prove their worth as a festival-commanding rock act with Frengers, the album's unique offerings emphasise that. "Snow Brigade" is the most propulsive song Mew have released, storming through like an avalanche on its powerhouse drums and metallic bass, breaking into a hectic chorus that's powered by chaos and panic but presented like a fist-pumping torchlight song; "She Spider" is much the same and previews the immediately succeeding "Comforting Sounds" with its quiet intro/loud fireworks finale approach, but this time the song breaks into a fierce repeat of its stand-out chorus, impassioned and furious yet also touchingly vulnerable. "Behind the Drapes" is nothing more or less than a classic stadium anthem, quite possibly the most earnestly direct song here but one which draws its power from that straightforwarness, Bjerre's beautifully pleading vocals laid down across one of the album's evocative melodies. "Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed" is laced with mood and thick with atmosphere, plaintively turning inwards; it still ultimately grows as vast as the rest of the record, but there's an eerily foreboding sadness about it that presents a shift in tone at a point when it's most welcome. None of these four songs sound like they came from a different batch with literal years between their writing, and that's both a testament to Mew's understanding of what they wanted from their songs from the very beginning (even if they necessarily didn't have the right resources or focus to pull it off to the exact vision) as well as to Costey and the band's skill in ensuring they all link together as a singular, unified statement.

That statement had an impact. To Mew and the wider Nordic rock canon, obviously: Frengers propelled Mew's career forward, solidified their position as one of the big names of the blogosphere indie world ("indie", I know, major label and all) in the early 2000s which was no mean feat for a non-UK Euro band and had a sizeable enough impact in the Nordic regions that for the following years you'd find many other artists tapping into the same ideas. But also, it was a huge personal influence. The first few years of the 2000s were my great period of musical exploration and discovery, the years when I realised how much music excited and mattered to me, as I ravenously dug into anything that even vaguely caught my attention, rapidly discovering new experiences and sounds. Frengers timed perfectly with that and genuinely sounded like nothing I had ever heard before: Bjerre's androgynously spellbinding falsetto vocals and the way the songs leaped across realms with their arrangements were unlike anything I had come across by that point. I was fascinated and intrigued by it, and quickly fell in love with the album. The heart and soul of Frengers is in its superlative emotions and the stunningly great melodies that the album is drowned in, but all those twists big and small made it sound like nothing else on earth. "156", as established, was the first song I heard by Mew and it was positively flooring in how dream-like it sounded, and it alone probably made me fall in love with a whole number of different musical ideas before I was even all that familiar with the rest of the record. Mew were one of the pivotal 'Flintcore' acts of the mid-2000s and much of it rests on the impression Frengers had on me.

The impressive thing is that even after so many years and so much more exposure I've had to other forms of music, Frengers still captures such a unique spirit that there's no other albums like it. There's plenty that tap into its various facets, sometimes even in combination - the raw power, the star-searching emotion, the surreal dreaminess, the unpredictability and even just the fairytale vocals - but none that do all of it and with such determination and confidence in the art its components form together. It's a firework display of imagination and songcraft, set in a unique world of its own that no one else seemingly has access to, and time has done nothing but made it more powerful as the teenage excitement has transformed into more refined tastes that can appreciate the detail in a different light. It may not have been their actual debut, but you can't think of a better way to announce your arrival to the world - and the music here not only deserved but demanded that the world pay attention.

Physically: Jewel case, with a lyrics booklet. The back of the booklet has the "not quite friends but not quite strangers" printed on it, just to make it clear what the title means.

[Reviewed: 27/10/2024]

AND THE GLASS HANDED KITES

1) Circuitry of the Wolf; 2) Chinaberry Tree; 3) Why Are You Looking Grave?; 4) Fox Cub; 5) Apocalypso; 6) Special; 7) The Zookeeper's Boy; 8) A Dark Design; 9) Saviours of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December); 10) An Envoy to the Open Fields; 11) Small Ambulance; 12) The Seething Rain Weeps for You (Uda Pruda); 13) White Lips Kissed; 14) Louise Louisa

A twisted and enchanting song journey through Mew at their most eccentric and out-and-out rocking.

Frengers was a hit - not necessarily a mainstream one, but it made Mew a hot talking point amongst the just as important (or so we reckoned, anyway) hipster/blogosphere crowd. I'm not certain what people imagined the inevitable follow-up would be like, but it's not common for an act in a situation like this to double down on their quirks - but that's precisely what Mew did with And the Glass Handed Kites. The term "prog pop" (and generally prog-anything) had been thrown around in Mew's direction from the start but those leanings were always almost tangential to Mew's core sound, whatever that was, but you can practically picture Mew in their practice space plotting the path ahead with a devilish grin on their faces. You wanted prog pop? You can have all of it.

Mew haven’t switched their game with And the Glass Handed Kites, per se. Their indie rock shenanigans still owe to both dream pop and shoegaze in equal amounts and they flick back and forth in the spectrum between muscular rock and ethereal delicateness in equal measures. If you were already in tune with Frengers you'd find yourself in comfortable ground with this album, and vice versa - you could make the case that Mew dial up their louder and more dynamic end even further here, but there's still plenty of those gentler melodies and sweeter power ballads placed alongside the churning riffs and maelstrom drumwork. What has changed is how the songs are delivered. And the Glass Handed Kites is an intertwined song sequence, a collection of chapters seamlessly segued into one another to form one continuous journey; and unlike most albums which purport the same, this isn't just a run of songs quickly mixed together. The tracks across the album literally bleed into each other, picking up patterns and references from one another and moving between the main motifs that make up each song. Sometimes a song might have changed without you having noticed it unless you pay attention to the song numbers, and other times you'd be surprised you're still listening to the same track even as the current section feels like another one has already begun. There's no greater concept running as an undercurrent to the action - certain lyrics repeat but it's all Bjerre's surreal dreamland imagery - and the motivation of the cycle is purely musical, to create something more majestic than the sum of the individual parts all together. It's done very thrillingly: the first few listens were bewildering and even now the turns and swerves of the ride you're on continue to impress, as the transitions become just as exciting as the actual songs.

Speaking of, there are in fact songs here, as despite the fact that the focus is on the collective whole Mew haven't forgotten about the importance of those individual parts. There are a handful of interstitials to help the flow of the album: "Circuitry of the Wolf" is an extended instrumental intro to "Chinaberry Tree" that kicks the doors open for the album, "White Ambulance" is a brief interlude and the most obvious "forced" bridging moment on the album, and the multi-part suite "Saviours of Jazz Ballet" is a little like a handful of scrapped sections brought together to form a piece of music that only makes sense within the album's context (though it is impressive, and particularly the bombastic parade-like sections are quite gorgeous). The rest, though, can all stand proudly even if taken out of their context (save for the abrupt starts and ends in some of the more heavily segued cases). The overall tone takes the hyper-dramatic emotionality of Frengers down a notch and instead gives the impression that much of this was inspired by the extended time spent on the road following the previous album, inspiring the band to go for snappier and louder songs that would be perfect for the set. Much of the album pushes down the gas pedal: "Chinaberry Tree" swings through the doorway that "Circuitry of the Wolf" left open and grabs immediately with alluring melody on top of muscular rhythm, "A Dark Design" starts quiet but then transforms into what feels like a long and loud chorus crescendo; both "Why Are You Looking Grave?" (with some delightfully animalistic guest vocals from Dinosaur Jr's J. Mascis, who also returns in the jaunty "An Envoy to the Open Fields") and the hyperkinetic "The Seething Rain Weeps for You" opt for a waltz rhythm to give their anthemic rises have a sense of grandeur and finesse, which works marvellously and results in a pair of towering wonders both longing and fierce. The energy doesn't let up throughout the album and it's not until the very end until we finally get some of Mew's now trademark sweeping ballads with its closing duo: "White Lips Kissed" aims for the same star-lit heights and theatre of "She Came Home for Christmas" and acts as the appropriate fireworks finale for an album as big and ambitious as this, and the hushed and almost formless "Louise Louisa" follows it like an unexpected post scriptum that whispers the album into bed with a long goodbye.

There's one stretch of songs that's of particular note, which is the four-song run from "Fox Cub" through to "The Zookeeper's Boy": a sequence that's not just one of the most impressive runs in Mew's discography, but it's one of the most exciting song runs I've generally come across. The shyly peeking “Fox Cub” serves as an unassuming prologue gently setting the scene before the steadily speeding drum beat begins to take shape. The dark dash of “Apocalypso” crashes in with its light-metal riffs and propulsive percussion, an adrenaline rush that has an air of dark onimosity around it, moving forth like a battering ram. Then at the end of its outro jam it suddenly morphs into the sharp-stabbing groove of “Special”- it's the most straightforward pop song of the album, rushing forward on top of its disco beat to the high-lunging chorus and even then it has a habit of freaking out and interrupting its four-to-the-floor rhythm unexpectedly across the verses like a record that's suddenly skipping. “Special” segues perfectly into the colossal “The Zookeeper’s Boy”, another one of Mew's instant classic larger-than-life and starry-eyed half ballad/half anthems, which finishes the sequence with a flurry of vocal harmonies all on top of another ascending into the heavens in its torchlight chorus, each time sounding bigger than before. Each of the three main songs (i.e. not "Fox Cub", intro as it is) is a colossal highlight on its own, but how they link together is utterly inspired and positively magical. The concept, the execution and the craft combine gloriously: it's And the Glass Handed Kites at its best, perfectly displaying why the band opted to go with this direction and how well they've pulled it off.

The success of it gives good credence for why this is considered an essential Mew album - their best by many, and while I don't agree with that per se I do think And the Glass Handed Kites distills much of the band's sound and ethos down wonderfully. A large part of Mew's charm is that they are creatively a little bit mad and fearless at pursuing ideas which might seem too kooky for most, and And the Glass Handed Kites has that exciting madness in droves. Segued "song cycle" albums are dime a dozen these days, but the special magic of this album specifically is how each song feels like a micro-scaled song cycle in themselves, leading to this awe-inspiring potpourri of beauty, brute force and pop whimsy going all over the place at all times. Yet it also hangs together so tight, with precision engineering and an impressive sense of self-control making sure it doesn't go so off the rails that it would be too much. I mean, the album is too much but in that giddy and wholly positive fashion: it delights in its own excess but doesn't let it get in the way of genuinely great songcraft. It’s an incredibly impressive record, no matter which angle you view it from - a portal to the weird world of Mew full of ambition and magic.

Physically: Gatefold with a fold-out lyrics 'poster'. Time has not been as kind with this one: the case was originally high-gloss (which is very impressive looking with the black sheen but you can be certain you'll leave your fingerprints on it) but the shine has worn down over the twenty years. The booklet too is made out of the same high-gloss material, which isn't that great for folding and so it feels like I'm about to tear it every time I unfold it. Still nice though - all in service of one of the worst cover artworks known to man.

[Reviewed: 05/11/2024]

CD SINGLES

COMFORTING SOUNDS

CD1: 1) Comforting Sounds (Radio Edit); 2) Wherever (Frengers Version); 3) Pink Monster
CD2: 1) Comforting Sounds; 2) City Voices; 3) Then I Run

Backseat record industry wiz here and all, but sometimes you do genuinely just wonder what the thinking process was behind some of the decisions made when it comes to promoting an album. "Comforting Sounds" not only plays a pivotal part in Frengers but it's arguably also the song most people would vote as Mew's crowning moment and/or signature song - most people would have pulled it out as an album highlight and so in that respect it makes sense someone would think it should be a single. But... did no one think this through? "Comforting Sounds" is a nine-minute miniature epic that takes about four minutes just for its opening credits to slowly roll in, before it abandons all vocals and spends the rest of its length slowly growing more and more gigantic, each run-through of the loop adding another layer or and instrument which in turn make the song even more galactic in stature, until it finally resolves in an enormous supernova of music.

Trying to turn that into a neat 3:45 radio single is a madman's job, and yet - someone tried their hands at it. Predictably, it doesn't go very well: half the vocals are dropped including all the song's more pivotal lyrics and the finale takes little time to rush into its highest crescendo, which means that they do both halves of the song dirty. It's one of the worst radio edits I've heard in my lifetime and should serve as a warning sign that just because you can technically make any song on the album a single, maybe sometimes you shouldn't no matter how esteemed that song is. So the mediocre rating for the A-side isn't for "Comforting Sounds" which is a 10/10 song in itself, but for the radio edit featured here which just about makes it to "pleasant" territory by the sheer virtue of the strength of the fragments of a song it features.

"Comforting Sounds", like most of the songs on Frengers, dates back to Mew's first couple of albums but was re-recorded for their big international debut. The band did however re-record more back catalogue favourites beyond what just appears on the album, and that additional material is scattered across the b-sides for the album's singles. When "Wherever" first appeared on A Triumph for Man it sounded like a potentially huge song that was too shy and inward-looking to dare to seize the chance, though that juxtaposition is one of the reasons why it's one of the album's highlights. This new version that's featured here no longer has those inhibitions and much like the album itself, proudly and boldly dials itself up to maximum. "Wherever" is now a brooding anthem, drowned in hazy textural guitars before mightily exploding in its chorus to gargantuan proportions: the effect is like witnessing someone who's been hiding their true self all this time finally gathering the courage to shout out to the world who they are. Despite being so moody in stature the overall feeling here is triumphant; had this been on Frengers it would have been one of its cornerstones and it's mad it was left out, presumably simply to avoid the album being all old material reinvisioned. It's fantastic, and worth the price of admission alone.

"Pink Monster" also comes from the debut album, this time directly with no re-recording involved as the band recycle old material as b-sides given the world outside Denmark would unlikely to have come across it before. Why they chose this silly novelty interlude is another question, but after two colossal songs it does admittedly form an amusing coda to it all.

Over on the CD2 issue side, the brand new b-side "City Voices" is a short (2:23) and gentle piano ballad, downright tiny and homely compared to "Comforting Sounds" that it follows (which is presented here in its full, wonderously colossal 9-minute length). That ends up inadvertently turning it into a beautiful pint-sized epilogue for the A-side, coming as a moment of soft calm to catch your breath after the galaxy-sized crescendo the last song ended in. It's simple but warming in its low-key nature, and the theremin is a particularly lovely touch for that added atmosphere. Like the CD1 issue, this too is then rounded off with another song lifted directly from A Triumph for Man: "Then I Run" was a highlight there, and it's still great here even if for a collector it's a little redundant.

Physically: Both issues are in cardboard slipcases with an inner sleeve guarding the disc. CD1 also comes with the music video for the song in its enhanced section.

AM I WRY? NO

2002 Issue 1) Am I Wry? No; 2) Like Paper Cuts; 3) Snowflake
2003 CD1: 1) Am I Wry? No (Radio Edit); 2) King Christian (Frengers Version); 3) Mica (Frengers Version)
2003 CD2: 1) Am I Wry? No; 2) She Spider (Live); 3) Comforting Sounds (Live)

Mew songs just do not bend to radio edits. The band love taking sudden swerves and adding multiple sections even into the songs that they intend to be big crowd pleasers, which then lengthen the runtime and all-around makes it less favourable for optimal radio play. But chopping all those build-ups and ironing out the plot twists take away much of what makes the songs so magical. The net positive is still good: the 3:35 edit of "Am I Wry? No" still contains the essence of what makes the five-minute original such a powerful anthem that it was deemed to be the ideal re-introduction for the band twice in their career. But the album version (which was at least included in the other CD issues besides the UK CD1 version) is brilliant, instead of "simply" good, and there isn't really a reason to reach out for the radio edit. Still better than the "Comforting Sounds" butcher job, at the very least.

"Am I Wry? No" was released and re-issued as a single a number of times, and if you could only pick one issue to go with then the pick of the bunch would be the 2003 UK CD1 version. Both "King Christian" and "Mica" originally appeared on Half the World Is Watching Me but were re-recorded during the Frengers sessions (which means that Mew re-did 7/8 of their second album for their major label debut album - poor "Saliva"), and they both succeed excellently through the new process and the flashier production and dynamics of Frengers. In fact, "King Christian" comes out better: while I love the goofy charm of the original version (the semi-embarrassed spoken word interlude included), the 2003 version digs deeper to find the killer pop song underneath the twee-adjacent fun and unleashes it into the world with tighter production and a firmer grip on the hooks. The chorus melody was always great, but here it's shatteringly brilliant, soaring like a shiny radio hit playing through the car radio while you're driving down the highway. I do prefer the original version of "Mica" - the naïve charisma of younger Mew works so well with the song's bright power pop lean and this more "professional" take loses a little bit of it - but we're still talking about an excellent track that many others would have included front and centre on their album. But, neither really suit the overall vision of what the band wanted to portray with Frengers and so here they lay, waiting to be discovered like buried treasure.

The UK CD2 issue of the single features two live takes; they're called "live acoustic versions" in the sticker on the cover of the single, but the inclusion of keyboards, theremins and electric guitars feels like that's not quite the truth. "She Spider" on the album is a bit of a firecracker, but the live version slows it down and highlights the more vulnerable feeling underneath, and it works really well. "Comforting Sounds" meanwhile stretches all the way to over ten minutes and instead of building up and building up like the original version does, it largely stays floating in that melodic loop of its finale for several minutes with only a hint of the additional layers appearing throughout - the biggest change being the drums that finally kick in around 7 and half minutes. It sounds like it could be repetitive but it actually hangs together wonderfully, and that beautiful melody stays just as spellbinding even when all the additional decorations have been pared down and the spotlight is solely in the core. All in all both versions are really rather gorgeous and far more interesting than it sounds on the outset.

Before the proper launch of Frengers in 2003, "Am I Wry? No" was released as a sneak peek preview the previous year (before getting reissued again as a single after the album release). This 2002 issue is worth noting for the non-album cut "Like Paper Cuts", a magically twinkling piano-lead ballad that sounds like watching the streets of a big city through your flat window at 3am, contrasting the stars in the sky with the quietly sleeping yet still gently bustling world underneath. I recall it used to play in the background of Mew's website back in the early 2000s (when we all thought it was cool when websites played music) and it was very exciting to hear this piece of "unknown" music just appearing there. It's a beautiful mood piece and probably the best of out of the many gentle b-sides in Mew's back catalogue. The second b-side is "Snowflake" straight off A Triumph for Man - one of my favourites on the album and still great here, but though I get it made sense to recycle songs from the OG albums few had heard at the time as bonus tracks, I do always feel it's a bit cheap to use album cuts as b-sides.

Physically: All issues are in a cardboard slipcase with an inner sleeve.

SHE CAME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

1) She Came Home for Christmas; 2) That Time on the Ledge

The Frengers campaign took an extended, several-month long break after the initial singles and the album's release, and then re-activated again towards the end of 2003 - because of course "She Came Home for Christmas" was always going to be a single, and naturally you'd have to release it in time for the holidays. Mew recorded a version of the song for each of their first three albums and each time it grew bigger and brighter, and it reaches its apex in its Frengers form. None of the sadness hidden in its lyrics underneath the saccharine melodies is gone, but the presentation has never sounded this unashamedly, earnestly beautiful. It's a thoroughly honest stadium torchlight ballad moment but brought to life with conviction and dedication, culminating in that all-time-greatest chorus that deserves to soar as valiantly as it does here. It didn't become a seasonal evergreen (even in indie circles), but that's just as well: it sounds wonderful through the year.

The wistful and travel-weary "That Time on the Ledge" was the last studio recording released during the Frengers period and it feels like a coda for the long, exciting journey that made up Mew's 2003. It positively sighs as it rides its softly embracing rhythm, offering a hand to hold in form of an invitingly lush and lovely mood piece of a song. It sounds like the perfect end for the chapter, complements the A-side well and is an all-around excellent song to boot.

Physically: Unlike all the other Frengers singles, this comes in a slim jewel case. The liner notes have instructions on how to download official Mew ringtones, which is very wonderfully 2003.

SPECIAL

1) Special (Radio Mix); 2) Animals of Many Kinds; 3) Apocalypso/Special (Live)

Following "Apocalypso" (which only ever received a couple of vinyl singles instead of a CD issue, boo!), the second single off And the Glass Handed Kites was the obvious one: the tight-if-erratic groove of "Special" is the most obvious radio play cut from the album, and one of the easiest to take outside the album's tightly constructed context as well: the radio mix here gives it a more defined start and finish instead of the segued bookends the album version has, and it doesn't take much editing to do that either. The explosively ecstatic song itself is left alone, and why would you want to mess around with something so brilliantly put together? It's a funked-out pop single but one that sounds first and foremost like only Mew could have dreamed it up, the sudden snare breaks and time signature switches and all.

The sole studio track of the single is "Animals of Many Kinds", which is actually an alternative (or a demo?) version of "The Zookeeper's Boy" from the ambum. In practice it works much like an acoustic version, or at least Mew's interpretation of "acoustic": still twinkly and layered, just with less of the dramatic anthemics and rock guitars. Its late night stargazing mood is different enough from the original to serve as something to listen to in its own right from time and time again, and continues Mew's tradition of neat alternate takes. The only other b-side here is a live version of "Apocalypso" (recorded in Finland!! Suomi mainittu!), but the packaging lies. This is listed as "Apocalypso (Live)" with a 4:45-ish length, but in reality the song extends over seven minutes and includes an interpolation of "Special" as a bridge of sorts, effectively turning this into a medley. The trio of "Apocalypso"/"Special"/"The Zookeeper's Boy" is the album's heart and center and the greatest example of how it's all mixed together, and as the story goes these songs were effectively born from different sections of the same song which then took a life of their own. Could the way "Special" appears in the middle of "Apocalypso" here hint how the tracks were originally one? Speculation, speculation. But what a blisteringly good live version and thanks to the "Special" interpolation, adds something new to the released discography while at it.

Physically: Back to cardboard slip cases, with an inner sleeve for the disc. This time it's all glossy, like the album packaging.

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING GRAVE?

Standard CDS: 1) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Radio Edit); 2) Forever and Ever
Special Edition CDS: 1) Why Are You Looking Grave?; 2) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Kissing Hoodie Mix); 3) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Mogwai 'Miow' Mix); 4) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Alternate Vocal Mix); 5) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Sun Demo); 6) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Kitchen Demo); 7) Why Are You Looking Grave? (Live)

The standard CD single of the stadium anthem waltz "Why Are You Looking Grave" is downright quaint. There's the radio edit of the song which cuts off the long outro, shortens the breakdown and inexplicably removes J. Mascis' guest vocals from the second verse (Bjerre sings it all instead, though Mascis' backing vocals appear later on in the song); the pulsating heart of the song remains fully intact and I don't actually mind the removal of the long outro for this purpose (the breakdown edit is a little less subtle), but I really miss Mascis' husky growl next to Bjerre's angelic harmony. Those two super-contrasting voices work so well together and it's genuinely a little weird it's removed. Next to the A-side, you have the lonely b-side "Forever and Ever" which is another pretty piano ballad in a long list of such items in Mew's singles. This one has some jingle bells in it this time too, which is the lone unique flavour of the track compared to the rest of its kind - it's very pretty but also simply not as notable as Mew's other piano cuts.

But just look at the tracklist for this limited, numbered edition (mine's #1350) of the single, with a whole seven versions of the song laid out on it - and that's before we get to all the enhanced content (which is the nice and very Mew-like music video and some live footage). The whole thing's almost a full 30 minutes long and it throws you in one version of "Why Are You Looking Grave" after another until you're almost sick of the song. You get the album version of course, with Mascis' vocals intact, but also an alternate vocal mix of the full deal with Bjerre's second verse from the radio edit in case you want more of him but all of the song. There are two remixes: the Kissing Hoodies Mix is effectively a skeletal acoustic guitar version and it's very intimate and lovely, with another set of unknown guest vocals (another band member? A Kissing Hoodie?) doing the second verse this time, while Mogwai's remix takes the atmosphere of the outro and stretches it across ambient-esque six and a half minutes in that cinematic way Mogwai operates. The two demo versions aren't all that different from each other or the final song, with Mew having had a good handle of what they were aiming for right from the start. The "Sun Demo" version has a slowly building intro before the song launches into its more familiar if slightly less energetic guise, and by the time they have gotten to the "Kitchen Demo" the structure is pretty much all there and it's just a slightly scruffier version of how we know the song, leaving it a little superfluous. The whole set is capped with a live version which is a good take all in all, but at the end of the disc I think I'm a little over Looking-Grave'd and the energy and dynamics of this version aren't distinct enough from all the others that came before to really warrant a hoorah. Mew are good live and this basically proves that while also offering nothing new to anyone who loves the album version.

Nonetheless, it's a really fun issue of the single, warts and all! It's not a million miles away from how I put the singles together in my digital music library after I've ripped all the songs, laying out the b-sides one after another into a neat extended set. This limited edition issue basically does it for me and that's quite fun if you're sad like me.

Physically: The standard issue is in a slim jewel case; the deluxe version is in Mew's traditional slipcase format.

THE ZOOKEEPER'S BOY

1) The Zookeeper's Boy (Radio Edit); 2) A Dark Design (Red Version); 3) Chinaberry Tree (Red Version)

The final single for the And the Glass Handed Kites campaign was "The Zookeeper's Boy", once again closing the promo cycle with the big power ballad that was always destined to be a single like the last time around. The radio edit primarily truncates the song's intro and outro, but like with "Special" it gives the song a definite start and finish to go with it. My heart will always be owned by the album version - it was a firm favourite from day one - and the edit does sound slightly off to my ears, but the key elements are all there: the soaring chorus, the ever-overwhelming layers of backing vocals, the eccentric charm of it all somehow packed into a grand stadium singalong. I don't mind throwing it a full 10 even in this form: one of Mew's most spellbinding moments.

Cruelly the one studio b-side for this single was relegated to the 10" version, so we don't get to enjoy the sunshine piano pop of "Safe as Houses" in HQ. Instead, we have two "Red Versions" of And the Glass Handed Kites album cuts, which translates into more acoustic takes in Mew's more expanded interpretation of what "acoustic" means. "A Dark Design" and "Chinaberry Tree", both explosive rock cuts, are now portrayed solely through the means of some acoustic guitars and chiming keyboards and they are very lovely takes, both songs being as much re-invented as they are re-interpreted and it doesn't sound like they suffer from losing all that momentum and riffage. The more I listen to Mew's acoustic b-sides the more I appreciate what they do with them: most artists would simply quickly toss together a simple acoustic guitar campfire version of a song, but Mew's approach on the theme sounds like they actually took a bit of time to figure out how to best display the songs in new light, and it leads to consistently solid as well as interesting stripped-down versions.

Physically: Another slipcase with an inner sleeve.

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