Mew - "No More Stories" Review

Artist: Mew

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

Label: Sony/BMG

Tracks: 14

Review by: John Durkee

Danish indie rockers Mew have been a conundrum their whole career, straddling the line of pretension and crowd pleasing. They maintain the pretension with horrible album covers and titles (see this album and …And the Glass Handed Kites), bizarre lyrical motifs throughout songs, and in the case of No More Stories… two songs titles that are pictures. Yet, for all its ridiculousness, Mew can write truly beautiful and cinematic songs often starting with a slow build, followed by a hushed bridge with lots of keys and synthed parts only to hammer back into a triumphant chorus or stratosphere into a resounding climax.

On No More Stories…, Mew’s change in this formula is evident from track one, “New Terrain”. Starting with backwards vocals and a steady and heavy drum pace, No More Stories… first impression is… unsurprisingly odd. After looking at the album cover and title, making such a bizarre experiment as having a backwards song recorded over the top of another for the album’s opener is just par for the course. After listening to the backwards song (“Nervous”) as well, it seems like it is more a gimmick than an actually inspired idea.

First single and second track “Introducing Palace Players” has a staccato beat that gets interrupted with an electronica infused shoegaze rise (just think M83), before returning to the staccato and what you think is just the first verse and what will go back to that huge build from earlier, but doesn’t happen. Mew stick with the odd staccato for all the verses and the chorus, with the familiar high pitched vocals sung over with soaring keys and rough guitars which give the feeling that the listener has two songs on at the same time, except this is a non-two-on-one-track-song. By some odd chance this goes together harmonically and is surprisingly rewarding with each listen.

Staccato and dissonance continues through much of the album, though during the album’s overstuffed middle they return to their usual form (slow build, big climax), except these tracks fail to pop with the same luster. At album’s end, Mew brings novelty, with a dynamic start progressing towards a fizzled out ending, providing success of great dividends with closer “Reprise” but fails to capture any lasting impression with “Cartoons and Macramé Wounds.” This is the pattern of No More Stories… mildly innovative and enjoyable concepts resulting with mixed results.

We all have a college friend that majored in totally impractical majors like poetry or philosophy with plans of challenging the world with abstract works of art and wonder. Mew never really got out of that stage, and while your friend eventually changed their major five or six times and dropped out to become a manager of a gas station, Mew still believes in challenging… But the point is either completely vapid or totally lost to the listener. Even within the beautifully constructed everyman journey of “Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy,” the message is lost in swirling presentation. And here is the kicker, with its weak point and strong songs, No More Stories… isn’t the pretentious masterpiece it’s trying to be, but a product of vacuously dramatic pop. Not that it matters, since the sound is sublime.