The opening track is titled, appropriately enough, "New Terrain," a statement of the band's willingness to shed whatever sound they've been pigeonholed into over the last decade. 2006's As the Glass Handed Kites certainly felt like a monumental album and one that could have gone on to define Mew stronger than anything that came before. Drenched in symphonic, proggy synths with tracks running together to form one long, dreamy narrative, Kites was unabashedly bombastic and huge, yet somehow managed to be almost impossibly listenable.
This could probably be attributed to lead singer Jonas Djerre's incredibly deft ability to write and sing melody. His high, soft voice compliments the band perfectly and helps build and maintain a deep and textural atmosphere, something most other bands that fall into the laughably general prog-pop camp can barely conceive of. It's this color and density of tone that pervades Mew's music and elevates them above their peers, and it is used to full effect on their latest, the admittedly awkwardly-titled No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry They Washed Away, No More Stories The World To Grey, I'm Tired Let's Wash Away.
I may be in the minority here, but I think this is Mew's strongest album yet. I've certainly listened to it more than any other Mew album. It does sound quite different from Kites, but anyone who's been following Mew since Triumph of Man shouldn't exactly be shocked by anything here. The band is now a three-piece, with Bo and Silas on guitar and drums respectively filling out the trio. Perhaps not surprisingly, the sometimes overwhelming density of Kites is lifted here in favor or a slightly sparser and brighter production, better emphasizing the individual parts and giving the three members plenty of room to breathe while still sounding incredibly cohesive. And while Kites reveled in its conceptual framework, No More Stories is perfectly content with consisting of, quite simply, a series of songs, something the band had stressed when discussing the album.
So you're left with a pretty great collection of songs that sound pretty diverse for a Mew record. They haven't foregone the whole symphonic prog bent -- halfway through is one of the album's larger statements, "Cartoons and Macreme Wounds," a bristling epic that hinges on a few gentle melodies repeated by Jonas, a childrens choir, and various keyboard instruments -- but generally speaking the songs maintain a sense of subtle craft and artistry that comes across as simpler and broader than anything the band had written previously.
I've been spinning at least half the songs on this record regularly on my radio show as they truly do stand alone and work exceptionally well both in and out of context of the album. The propulsive "Repeaterbeater" is this album's "Zookeeper's Boy," a swirling, driving pop song that finds Jonas struggling against an array of synths and floating audio effects over subtly shifting time signatures. The latter half of the album really opens up; "Hawaii" is a sunny, bouncy number held aloft by an array of jangly percussion and an infectious chant intro, while "Tricks of the Trade" is perhaps one of the darkest Mew compositions, hinging on a mysterious electronic beat and laced with synth strings and dark ambience, as Jonas worries "What they gonna do to me?/ Just when I thought I'd be/ Free of all the memories/ She's calling me."
Some lyrics are awkward (I have to be in a certain mood with certain people not to giggle to myself at the hook of "Cartoons and Macreme Wounds") and the album's bookends are easily the two weakest tracks here, but this shit doesn't really matter. What pervades the music here -- that sense of tonal complexity that elevates the songs to levels of dreamlike reverie -- makes "No More Stories" worthy of many, many listens. It's a statement of a slight, though marked, change in direction that completely suits the new three-piece and makes me excited to see where they go from here.
