release date: Apr. 1, 1997
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,52]
producer: Damon Tutunjian; Mew (co-producer)
label: Exlibris / Evil Office - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 1. "Wheels Over Me" - 3. "Wherever" - 4. "Panda" - 7. "No Shadow Kick" - 9. "She Came Home for Christmas" - 11. "I Should Have Been a Tsin-Tsi (For You)" - 13. "Web" - 14. "Coffee Break"
Studio album debut by Mew originally released on the small Danish label Exlibris Musik in only 2000 copies. The album was reissued as a 2-disc version (with a bonus disc containing demo and alternate recordings) in 2006 by Evil Office, the band's own sub-label of Sony BMG. Unfortunately, I never came across the album back then, but I knew of the band around '98, alas without ever paying it much attention. The reissue album contains a bonus disc with demo and alternate takes. Mew formed in 1994 as a quartet consisting of Jonas Bjerre on lead vocals, Bo Madsen on guitar, Johan Wohlert on bass, and with Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen on drums.
The music is an original mix of indie pop, dream pop, shoegaze, and noise pop with inspirational sources from My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Mazzy Star, and Swirlies [album producer Damon Tutunjian is part of this band]. The album has delicate blue-eyed pop-moments and fine progressive pop / art pop ideas - almost post rock elements, only I find that the album mostly functions in a sense of making sketching to something... more, but definitely full of sheer talent.
[ Sputnikmusic 4,5 / 5 stars ]
