New video: Mew - Beach

Mew's official music video for the track 'Beach', off their 2009 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, is finally out!

mp3: Mew - Beach(alternate download link)



The members of Danish dream pop / alternative rock band Mew first met each other in the early nineties, when the four founding members worked together on a 7th grade art project. Their project consisted of an art film combining self-composed music with self-recorded video, and was a strong hint of what to come - lead singer Jonas Bjerre still loves to combine video and music in interesting and artistic ways, something Mew fans all over the world know to appreciate.

In all their live shows, bizarre and fascinating backdrop videos always run behind the band for the entirety of the show. These are actually all made by Bjerre personally, who in the meantime between directing his 7th grade art video and breaking through internationally with Mew in 2003 actually for a period also worked professionally with post-production and special effects. For an example of Bjerre's work, check out the absolutely stunning backdrop video for 'Comforting Sounds' (if you're impatient, 4:20 is when the magic begins).

Although Bjerre doesn't produce the official music videos for the band himself, the world is always in for a treat when a new Mew music video is released nonetheless. Due to the band's love for interesting and experimental imagery, they always work with really interesting young up-and-coming directors. 'Beach' was directed by 29 year old Danish director Lasse Martinussen, who also did their last video (Repeaterbeater), and it's truly bizarre and unique - in that special Mew way.

While Beach arguably is the most straigthforward, sweet and bright song on the album, almost naive-sounding compared to other tracks such as the dark New Terrain or the complex and labyrinthian Introducing Palace Players (my absolute favorite track of 2009!), the video is far from naive and sweet. The cheerful song, compared with dark, perplexing and unnerving images, makes for a fantastic music video that makes me once again reconfirm my deep love for these Danish pop geniuses. Enjoy!

Christmas playlist

I hope everyone's enjoying the holidays. Here are some tracks I listen to a lot these days, to get into the christmas mood - my alternative/indie rock Christmas playlist!

Eels - Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas

Eels - Christmas Is Going to the Dogs

"Baby Jesus, born to rock." - "Get off your sled and go to bed - don't you ever tire?". Mr. E, of the US alternative rockers Eels, knows how to rock my Christmas!

Drawing Constellations - All I Want For Christmas Is You (Ooh Baby)

Drawing Constellations - Chestnuts Roasting

Canadian indie rockers Drawing Constellations do a couple of awesome and very fresh-feeling takes on two christmas classics.

Erlend Øye - Last Christmas

A track from one of Norwegian Erlend Øye's (of Kings of Convenience and Whitest Boy Alive) acoustic solo shows. He too does a cover of a Christmas song I'm quite tired of, but does a very sweet interpretation of the song. I'm honestly not very fond of WHAM at all, but Øye manages to turn this cheesy 80s hit into something completely different - something beautiful!

Mew - She Came Home For Christmas

Danish indie/prog rockers Mew wrote this gem in the mid-nineties, and it has been released as a Christmas single over and over again between 1997 and 2003 in Denmark and the rest of the world. Here's the 2003 version from their breakthrough album Frengers. A sweet ballad that will ensure Christmas mood!

of Montreal - Christmas isn't safe for animals

Psychedelic indie poppers of Montreal, from Athens, Georgia, just being their usual weird selves. This quirky Christmas song is really charming!

Mew - Introducing Palace Players (from No More Stories...)

Mew - Introducing Palace Players

Danish art-rockers/prog-rockers Mew are finally back, and are in August set to release their first album in four years. Their pretentiousness, which they often joke about themselves, shines through in the album's absurdly long title. The next Mew album is called (*cleanses throat*):

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

Yup, that's the name of the album. The first song from No More More Stories... has leaked, and it's called Introducing Palace Players. The mp3 I posted for it is very likely to be a transcode, since the song only has been released on Mew's Myspace and on a Pitchfork stream so far, but I hope you all will be able to enjoy it nonetheless. It's a very promising sounding track, I can't wait to hear the whole album!

A Triumph for Man (1997)

Being a new writer on this blog, I thought I could start out by writing about one of my all-time favorite albums.

Mew - Coffee Break

Mew - Panda

Mew - Web

Above, you can find my three favorite tracks from Danish indie rock / dream pop band Mew's 1997 debut album, A Triumph for Man. Today, Mew are arguably the most famous for the pompous and bombastic prog-rock influenced soundscape of their fourth studio album, And the Glass Handed Kites (which was also their definite international breakthrough). It is hard to imagine that this "indie stadium band" (jokingly dubbed so by guitarist Bo), who after their latest release opened for REM on their Europe tour, and Bloc Party on their US tour, started out with the mellow-sounding and introverted A Triumph For Man - a record release that saw no more than a mere 2000 CDs produced.

In this early album, the influences that shaped Mew to the band they are today, are much more easily recognizable. It is quite evident that the four Danes grew up listening to the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Swirlies. The distorted walls of guitars and the high-pitched vocals of these shoegaze bands were combined with smart pop songwriting to create the easily accessible, but still deep little masterpiece A Triumph for Man. The strutting confidence of the guitars combined with shy, eccentric frontman Jonas Bjerre's soft and modest voice and melancholic lyrics make for a true beauty of an album, by many Danish music journalists considered one of the 90s best records.

The influence from Swirlies is at times painfully obvious, but the similarity was by all means blessed from Swirlies themselves. Damon Tujian, guitarist and vocalist of the Boston shoegazer band, personally crossed the atlantic and endured many long and cold Danish winter weeks to co-produce this debut album of the four 20-year old boys. I personally prefer this classic to Mew's newest effort, and warmly recommend this best example of what Scandiavian rock music has to offer.