Biography
To call Mew 'sort of surreal', of course, is like saying Bill Gates is 'reasonably well off'. If the sprawling, soaring bliss-rock of their breakthrough third album Frengers (2003) - particularly the ecstatically icy space ballets She Came Home For Christmas and NME Single Of The Week Comforting Sounds - projected a sense of glacial fairy tale wonderment (the sort of thing The Brothers Grimm might have written after a month on the road with Hope Of The States) then their fourth record 'Mew. and the Glass Handed Kites' is an even greater leap into the unknown. Redefining the concept of an 'album' - and, indeed, of a 'concept album' and the Glass Handed Kites is an eccentric 60 minute rock headfuck, flinging musical ideas, distorted nightmare images and heartbreak choruses at the listener with what at first seems to be a random ferocity. One minute we're sailing towards Valhalla on 'Chinaberry Tree''s crusade-rock stomp, the next we're being asked "Why are you looking grave?" by J Mascis over a My Bloody Valentine throb, the next we're in the middle of an ethereal ballad about hiding foxes. Initially it sounds like ten bands playing ten different albums at the same time, which we're tuned in and out of by some insane studio engineer; repeated listening, however, reveals a remarkably unified work that picks up the experimental baton of 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' and drenches it in Mew's unique other-worldy glisten. "We wanted it to be one long song," says bassist Johan Wohlert. "It's difficult to do it and it's a difficult record to listen to but it'll keep you interested for a really long time." "It's quite a mouthful," Jonas adds. "We took the idea of making a record a long journey all the way on this record." "We knew that we had it in certain songs," says guitarist Bo Madsen. "We had the elements of it on 'Frengers' and we knew it would be a huge challenge for us as a band to spread that out over 60 minutes but we also knew it was something we'd always dreamt of doing, making a body of work, making a masterpiece that you had to listen to from A to Z in order to make any sense of. It was a fucking tough record to make but it was what we had to do. We could have made a 'Frengers Part Two' but it wouldn't have been right. We always go the hard way around, and that's what gives it its uniqueness, that we spend so much time dwelling on the details. One of the fun things about playing in this band is that it is about challenging the structures, challenging what can be done within the context of rock music. It's good that you try, for the sake of art, to push your limits as a band, and your limits of perception. The first time you think it's fucked up but the tenth time you get around to it it starts to make sense. One of the things that makes it fun for us is trying to fuck with people as to what can be done. It's all been assembled together by small parts. It was a big jigsaw puzzle, totally beyond anything we've ever done."
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