Mew - 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

“Through all this, we decipher. And what’s worse: we’re no wiser.”

It’s strange, five months ago I had no idea who Mew were, and now here I am, reviewing their new album, which is (SPOILERS!) one of my favorites this year. Life, huh?

Hailing from Denmark, they’ve apparently been pretty famous over there since their 2003 release, Frengers (a portmanteau of the words friend and stranger), and started getting global attention after their 2005 album And the Glass Handed Kites (thanks Wikipedia!). Yes, both those albums have ridiculous names and even more ridiculous album art, but they’re also both great. And Mew’s newest album, 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 (which will be shorted to No More Stories… for the rest of this review because ridiculous) follows in suite: crazy long title, seemingly illogical artwork, and a fantastic album.

For those unfamiliar with Mew, which I assume is almost all of you, they’ve made a successful career out of combining catchy pop sensibilities with keyboard-heavy progressive tendencies. This combination could have easily gone awry, but in Mew’s hands it works wonderfully. No More Stories… takes the catchy accessibility of Frengers and combines it with the epic, over the top attitude of And the Glass Handed Kites to create a perfect blend of what the band does best. From the heavily backmasked opener “New Terrain”, to the sad, synth-powered closer “Reprise”, you’ll find there are just as many hummable melodies as there are bombastic climaxes.

No More Stories… is split into three parts by two Intermezzos, as they’re called here (interesting note: while they’re called Intermezzo 1 and 2 in most tracklists, these names do not appear anywhere on the packaging. Instead, the titles of these songs are replaced by recolored versions of the face/butterfly on the album cover. So I guess the official titles are pictures?). The first part consists of four songs, and is absolutely fantastic. “New Terrain”, which uses heavy backmasking on pretty much everything, and is actually a completely different song when played backwards, fades into what might be the best song on the album, “Introducing Palace Players”. After a glitchy, sporadic intro it segues into a strange-but-catchy guitar riff that carries through most of the song, holding it down through the dreamy keyboard and vocals, and then goes out in a quick but effective bang. The next two songs, “Beach” and “Repeaterbeater”, are easily the shortest and most straightforward songs Mew has written since Frengers. Fortunately, straightforward doesn’t mean boring, as Mew is able to pack a lot of musical ideas into these five minutes, especially in “Repeaterbeater”.

After the quick “Intermezzo 1”, No More Stories… slows it down a bit with the simple, dreamy ballad “Silas the Magic Car”, then brings out its epic centerpiece, “Cartoons and Macramé Wounds”, which starts big, gets small, then gets huge, ending in the biggest climax on the album. After the short “Hawaii Dream” (whose lyrics are the album’s title) and “Hawaii”, a marimba-tinged highlight, the albums hits its lowest point. Not to say that “Vaccine” and “Tricks of the Trade” are bad songs by any means, I actually really like the second half of “Tricks of the Trade”, they simply don’t quite hold up to the rest of the album.

That said, the album finishes on a high note. “Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy” includes a song structure that goes from huge to minimal, a blistering sax solo, and one of the catchiest, happiest sounding choruses the band has written. The album closes with the slow, sad reprise of “Silas the Magic Car”, “Reprise”. While pretty much all the lyrics on this album are about various kinds of relationships (all of them troubled), the lyrics of “Reprise” seem to be the laments of a man who regrets not doing more with his life. It’s a little depressing, but fits nicely as the closer, as if to say, “Life can be hard sometimes, but make sure you don’t waste it”.

No More Stories… is a terrific accomplishment for Mew, as it acts as an almost perfect blend of everything Mew has to offer. If you’re an old fan, this album is sure to please you. And if you’re new to Mew, I suggest checking them out. As the old saying goes, “Sometimes you have to go to Denmark to find what you love”. Probably.

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