Album Review: Mew, "No More Stories"

Mew's No More Stories... features many of their best songs to date, is back loaded with some excellent tracks, and rewards repeated listens. It works when listening to headphones or playing on a speaker throughout your apartment. If the album existed in a bubble, I would be willing to highly recommend it. As it stands, however, I must declare No More Stories one of the most more disappointing albums of 2009, in that it fails to deliver on the promises offered by And the Glass Handed Kites.

What made And the Glass Handed Kites such an enthralling American breakthrough was how advanced Mew proved to be on arrival. They had taken the leads offered by Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine, but under the relative anonymity of Denmark, were able to develop a sound perfectly suited for an arena rock setting. This was a sound Radiohead worked for over a decade to establish. It was one of the most promising major label debuts this decade, and Mew didn't feel the name to limit itself to a rock club aesthetic. Moreover, Mew's lyrics implied a self-awareness of the perils of latter-day rock ambitions. It's not that difficult to understand the metaphor of "The Zookeeper Boy"'s chorus: "You're tall just like a giraffe/ You have to climb to find its head/ But if there's a glitch/ You're an ostrich/ You've got your head in the sand.

So while No More Stories is a very good album, it's a step back for the band in terms of their accessibility to an audience outside a very small circle. The confused, swirling production of "New Terrain" sets the album off on a rather dismal note, the classical piano Intermezzos are smug, needless filler material, and as much as certain keyboard touches and hidden melodies reveal themselves on repeated listens, so does the insidious presence of Autotune.

Things would be different if Mew was intent on performing some sort of crossover. If they were trying to reintroduce hipsters to the mainstream, or vice versa, then we may be talking about a special album. But if No More Stories is no more accessible than any Animal Collective album, and no weirder than any post-Kid A Radiohead album.

For a generation raised on Radiohead, this isn't a problem. But it's worthless for teenagers and college students, who lack to perspective to fully appreciate how class divided the music industry remains. This perspective cannot be easily found on the Internet. If Mew is the best major label, big budgeted band we can come up with, we're setting the bar very low for an entire generation.

Perhaps after the lack of American chart success, or even significant coverage in the press, Mew tried to target the Pitchfork market a little more; if they were given the B-stage at Pitchfork Music Fest after releasing a stunning major label debut, an arena seemed like a crap shoot. But there's a certain cynicism to Mew limiting themselves in such a manner. They have some great songs, "Repeater Beater" is about as enthralling a pop song as dream pop gets, and "Vaccine" is an excellent variation on the traditional alternative loud-quiet-loud dynamic. With cleaner production, these tracks could have been major hits. Instead, they're deeply confused tracks that will inevitably play much bigger live, assuming that a big enough crowd shows up.

No one needs to tell me of how despicably the majors have alienated music fans. Because of that negativity, it's easy to forget what can come out of good production values, a dedicated support staff, and an ability to fill arenas. The turmoil the majors have self-inflicted are now showing their full force, but we're starting to see the positives for bands that were lost in industry upheaval. Sometimes the constraints of label demands, and the lifting of budgetary constraints can be a major asset to a band. It can especially be an asset for a band that comes from a less ambitious, but no less demanding community. As long as bands like Mew tell people that's not necessary, none of the flaws in contemporary music will change. No More Stories is a needless, self-defeating act of self-sacrifice, one that will bury more ambitions than it inspires.