[kj] [RE] OT: Mew

[Darren A. Peace]

Mew are great! I saw them supporting Martin Grech a few years ago, and their show, even in stupidly small venues, was hypnotic. They projected weird computer animations over themselves, and are much harder live, despite the disconcertingly high vocals. I recommend their second Danish album “Half The World Is Watching Me”, as it features stronger versions of several songs from “Frengers”, particularly “156”, “Am I Wry? No” and “Comforting Sounds”. “A Triumph For Man”, their limited and hitherto stupidly hard to find first album (I stopped looking when the one that turned up on ebay a year ago topped £200), has recently been reissued in Scandanavian countries as a 2-disc set, which is nice, although the album is more twee than what follows, with nonsense about pandas and balloons. Very eccentric song structures, though, of which I approve.

 

I’m interested by the fact that people, including me, tend to regard the baseline of their appreciation of a band as the first recording they connected with. I heard “Half The World…” first, and so that is the benchmark for me. “Glass Handed Kites”, despite featuring one of the worst album covers I've ever seen ( http://tinyurl.com/34fmqu - I think some people should be banned from using Photoshop), is wildly prog, and no worse for that – it certainly repays the effort of the first few listens. The leap of faith I have to make with Mew is overcoming my aversion to very high male vocals (it shows how shallow I am in that if the exact same album were released and I were led to believe the vocals were female, my attitude would be totally different – I blame the corrupting influence of Pinky and Perky), but they warrant the effort, in my view. When talking with Jonas, the singer, I was startled to find that his speaking voice is normally pitched – I had expected Tiny Tim. Mew were adopted by REM, whom they supported many times on legs of world tours, and I really dislike REM, but can’t blame Mew for that!

 

Darren

Hungerford, UK

 

From: gathering-bounces at misera.net [mailto:gathering-bounces at misera.net] On Behalf Of Javier Garcia
Sent: 28 March 2007 17:19
To: A list about all things Killing Joke (the band!)
Subject: [kj] [RE] OT: Mew

 

I discovered them about a year or so, i listened -just by coincidence in the radio- some tracks of their "and the Glass Handed Kites" CD and i was curious, then i had the chance to listen the whole album about 4/5 times and i found it awesome! The inflluence of Sigur Ros is very obvious but still they have a sound of their own; there are some very pretty and melancholic moments in their music and also some nice energetic tunes. It's a very nice mix. I've listen some tunes of other early albums but i didn't found them as good as the ones in "and the Glass Handed Kites". I know they released another album "Triumph for Man", but haven't listened it yet... anybody? 

My two cents 

Have-ear 
mexcity 









---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------

Subject : [kj] OT: Mew

Date : Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:25:11 +0100


>From : fatpotanga <fatpotanga at gmail.com>


To : The Gathering <gathering at misera.net>



I¹ve just discovered Œmew¹ & I am mightily impressed. 

I felt I had to tell somebody. 

I go now... 

Bye. 

 

  _____  


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