Send "mewithoutYou " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 Of all the horrible things being said about the new mewithoutYou album It's all crazy! it's all false! it's all a dream! it's alright, the worst is that it is "uninspired." The word gets thrown around a lot by music critics and it often describes an album that the critic finds either too similar to other bands' music or too similar to the band's earlier albums. Since this album is neither, I take it that "uninspired" refers to the lack of energy (re: distortion, shouting) in the tracks. What people seem to have difficulty realizing is that while It's all crazy! does lack the aesthetic energy of their earlier albums, it has an underlying creative energy that feels stronger than ever. And this is mewithoutYou's most inspired album yet. Granted, if you aren't a Christian, you might not like their inspiration. The album is intensely spiritual and the description of "Christian campfire songs" is actually pretty accurate, but that's not a bad thing. "the Angel of Death came to David's room" and "Allah, Allah, Allah" especially fit that specification. But there's a silver lining to every cloud; instead of seeing these songs as freaky cult tunes, look at them as joyful anthems. Just start singing along, because that's clearly what the band wants you to do. Opener "every thought a Thought of You" is an easy one, with a simple melody and an incredibly catchy interplay between guitar and bass. And if you can't help pining for hints of mewithoutYou's former albums, you can even sing along to "bullet to Binary (pt. two)," with its ending chants of "All the time, everyone, everywhere, everything" backed by slow-burning chords....full text |
| Thehurstreview |
| The first time my wife walked through the living room and heard me listening to mewithoutYou’s new album, she asked me, without a trace if irony or sarcasm, if I was listening to a children’s record. I don’t think she meant it as a knock, and I don’t mean it as one when I repeat it here. In a weird way, the record does indeed sound like a record made for children– albeit the kind that only really cool parents would actually play on the nursery boombox. It’s not because it’s juvenile, or immature, or that the lyrics voice particularly childish concerns; it’s got more to do with a certain sense of, well, childlikeness on the part of singer and lyricist Aaron Weiss, who brings a certain half-mad fairy-tale logic to a set of songs in which talking animals allegorize Bible stories and sentient fruits and vegetables echo wisdom from ancient Sufi philosophers, all as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. If his story-time poetics possess something of childhood’s innocence and imagination, his actual writing brings out something of childhood’s uninhibited vigor and enthusiasm– albeit with a decidedly grown-up vocabulary. Weiss practically trips over himself, sometimes, to spit out long strings of ten-dollar words, some of them antiquated and some outright arcane. It’s what the hipsters are calling “thesaurus rock,” but make no mistake: What Weiss is doing is very different from what The Decemberists and Joanna Newsom– two similarly literate (and at times a bit pretentious) artists– are doing. Colin Meloy, you see, writes theater pieces, tall tales, and historical fiction; Weiss writes fables. Complex as his songs can be, most of them could probably be boiled down into a moral or metaphysical proverb– but where would the fun be in that?...full text |
| Knoxroad |
| I feel as though mewithoutYou has long been neglected in the indie music community, and I guess, until now, that’s really been understandable. Their earliest releases were deeply rooted in post-hardcore, and vocalist Aaron Weiss alternated from sing-speak to yell-speak over mounds of angry, pounding distortion. Now, though, things have changed. The band’s newest – it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright – fully embraces all the folk-rock hints the band has thrown at us over the years. Musically, its range is vast, and lyrically, Weiss is as acute as ever. Unlike the guitar/drums/bass of old, mewithoutYou has employed a vast number of instruments for its latest. You’ll hear flute, tuba, melodica, strings, trumpet, and piano, among many others. It all fits in perfectly with the distinct mewithoutYou aesthetic, though. Nothing here feels out of place while backing Weiss’ wiry sing-speak. Lyrically, it’s important to keep in mind that this effort is basically a worship album masquerading as a folk rock CD. Weiss’ lyrics range from subtly religious to bluntly religious, from metaphor-laden stories about foxes and beetles to other, heavier-handed sentiments (“What a beautiful God, what a beautiful God, what a beautiful God there must be!”). Every lyric fits into its place, though, just like…I don’t know, a God-tinted puzzle piece or something. But the obvious statements accent the subtle stories they follow, and the stories themselves are full-on narratives, mini-epics within themselves....full text |
mewithoutYou lyrics
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