And I want to be EMA, so there’s a nice bit of synergy…
[Video][Website]
[5.64]
Alfred Soto: God, what a perfect band name. “Mew” is what they sing like — mew mew mew the stars are out tonight, admire my perfect arpeggios and my autographed photo of Ben Gibbard. Key lyric: “I wanna be with a girl like she.”
[0]
Luisa Lopez: If stadiums were dreamscapes, and rock music a phone call, and satellites our friends. It never quite hits you in the heart, but oh it gets close.
[6]
Mo Kim: Top five moments, in order of appearance: 1) The surprising serenity of those opening strings. Such a small thing to fixate on, but I genuinely want to make those strings my morning alarm — my quality of life would probably significantly increase. 2) That first iteration of the chorus when, after about a minute of solid buildup, everything drops out but massive guitar chords layered over skittering hi-hat rhythms. In some ways those are opposites, but in others they’re one and the same. 3) Jonas Bjerre’s delivery of the line “my own electricity” as something that aches, wants, strips to reveal something vulnerable but vital. Chiiiillllls. 4) The layering of the different voices and melodic motifs from 3:30 forward makes me rewind every time because there’s so much there I want to catch again. 5) Imagine hearing the final minute of this in a stadium, people shouting back “My life is my own” over drum rhythms that have finally broken free, sounds that envelop the listener but still feel warm and soft and uplifting. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of “Satellites,” but it makes me feel the same way I feel after eating a particularly satisfying breakfast, and I’m not much of a breakfast person.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: Mew will forever be in my good graces for their Stina Nordenstam collaboration, but here they’ve launched into tenor/e-guitar orbit way too soon for the runlength. It’s pretty; so, in the start, are failed rocket launches.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: Jonas Bjerre’s voice is so much the dominant force in Mew’s music that you can barely notice that the music underneath has changed tack mid-song until he stops singing. A big stadium indie anthem is liable to start strutting without you noticing, and some people find this thrilling and some find it nauseating. Usually I fall into the former camp but on this occasion there’s a little bit of a feeling that maybe I’m wrong.
[6]
Ian Mathers: I loved Frengers, then they went a bit prog in a way that was uncompelling. I’m still waiting for hooks as shimmering as “She Came Home for Christmas” or “Snow Brigade,” but even at their most abstract Mew are usually good for at least a few straightforwardly lovely singles. “Satellites” is in that tradition, although your tolerance may vary based on how you feel about Jonas Bjerre’s enthusiastic yelp of a voice. Personally, I’ve missed it.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: My beef with post-rock emerged with Explosions In The Sky appearing on Letterman or one of the same unfunny dudes. I’d heard Godspeed! You Black Emperor on Last.FM after ODing on Slint and thought it was OK, and the Internet explained to me that this was the next step in the best that guitar world could provide. Much to my horror, I bore witness to a bunch of gaudy white dudes with the biggest idiot baby-faces of glee over-enthusiastically mugging while playing what was musically basic as hell, and overwrought with sincerity and glistening crescendo self-importance. Mew operate a similar vibe, though much more overtly married to the arena bombast of rawk in the way Muse indulge in neo-prog via Radiohead and Jeff Buckley. They are doing the dumbest of bold gestures, but they perform them to such hysterical preciousness and “STAND BACK, WE’RE DOING BOLD MUSICAL GESTURES” that I almost want to call up my idiot uncle, snap him out of his Rush Fan coma and sic him on this sack of musical placenta.
[1]
Brad Shoup: Lyrics so syntactically off, vocals so falsetto, music so high-flown and proggy, I thought I was listening to a 2010s Coheed record.
[5]
Iain Mew: “I like you real silver line” is a clear successor to “care-line”: not clear what it means but still sweet and perfect for the filagreed music. Mew have already proved themselves expert at huge yet tranquil, and the space synths and satellite transmission patterns help “Satellites” feel like an emotional epiphany that’s the more touching for being willed through a layer of fog and static for broadcast.
[8]
Will Adams: A radio edit will cut this to the appropriate length, but the whole journey is necessary to enjoy “Satellites”: a triple-meter intro that twists and turns across keys until it lands on its uplifting tempo and an arrangement that is larger than life.
[7]
David Sheffieck: In this fallen world, we ended up with the Coldplay we deserve (i.e. Coldplay), but in some alternate dimension guided by justice, the earth got Mew instead. While they’re melodramatic and kinda ridiculous – this is, after all, a song about wishing to be a satellite – Mew are also masters of a kind of radical honesty, the kind that it takes to make a six-minute song about wanting to be a satellite and turn it into a epic with massive hooks. It’s the rare gimmick that’s yet to wear out its welcome, possibly because the band never saw it that way in the first place.
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