mewithoutYou: It’s all Crazy! It’s all False! It’s all a Dream! It’s Alright!

June 5, 2009 in album reviews by pendevil | 4 comments

In their latest album (It’s all Crazy! It’s all False! It’s all a Dream! It’s Alright!), mewithoutYou boldly moves to new territory. At most it only hints at their earlier works, and if it doesn’t alienate you, it will entice you and hold you captive for weeks.

Is it right to say a Christian band has evolved? That’s the first word that comes to mind when I talk about mewithoutYou’s newly released album, It’s all Crazy! It’s all False! It’s all a Dream! It’s Alright!. If I may go on a bit, I’d like you to ask yourself if you really wanted this album to sound just like any of their past ones. After thinking about it, I realized that, no, regardless of how much I love Brother, Sister, I don’t want them to just repeat it. I don’t think anybody really wants that, wants mewithoutYou to turn into a formula band for prosperity’s sake. As such, they more or less closed the book of Brother, Sister and started a new one. That, I feel, is a far nobler task worthy of buying an album.

In all truth, it has none of the grit and rawness of A-B Life or Catch for us the Foxes, and only occasionally sounds like Brother, Sister, so just about everyone who listens to this album feels a bit of estrangement. I did, but soon I opened up to it, because it’s a great album on its own, regardless of its heritage.

It is a far more melodic and, well, happy-sounding (at times) album as a whole than any of their past works. One of the best examples of this joyful sound is in “A Stick, A Carrot & String”. It’s about Christ and in the opening of the song, at His birth, all the manger animals talk to him. One of my favorite lines in the entire album comes from here, and it goes: The donkey whispered in his ear / “Child, in thirty-some-odd years, / you’ll ride someone who looks like me.” / (untriumphantly)

There is good news for those of you expecting a little bit of Aaron screaming again, in the song “Bullet to Binary (Pt. Two)”. As you may recognize, this is a revival of the song from A-B Life, and it sounds like it. Granted, halfway through it gives you this wonderfully Arabic left-hook, but I dug it and I think many of y’all will too.

There is a wonderful theme of storytelling in this album. By that I mean that many of the songs tell stories, and it lends well to Aaron’s familiar style of complex lyrics thick with imagery. I liked it, but as a whole it was as if the album took a step away, into the third-person perspective while the earlier ones were much closer in, more personal. I liked it, though. In looking at the back of the jacket, it lists tracks two and ten as being inspired by tales by one M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, and it shows. Track two is “The Fox, the Crow and the Cookie”, and ten is my favorite “The Kind Beetle on a Coconut Estate”. According to wikipedia, “The Fig with a Bellyache” is also based on an Islamic folktale, but that’s wiki, so I dunno…

As a whole, though the lyrics are better than ever, and the storytelling theme helps keep them focused, with garden metaphors in “Bullet to Binary (Pt. Two)” and the dialog between king David and the angel of death in “The Angel of Death came to David’s Room”.

The one thing that’s really missing from this album, that was in their past ones, is the trance-esque sounds like in “The Sun and the Moon” or “Carousels”. Remember “In a Sweater Poorly Knit”? That level of complex orchestration is commonplace in It’s all Crazy! It’s all False! It’s all a Dream! It’s Alright!, and I liked it, but I’m sure there are those out there who won’t (not to judge!).

In short, buy this album. Then buy another and get all your friends to buy copies, too, because it’s that good and mewithoutYou is that worth it as a band. And who knows, maybe if they get enough sales from this album, they may stay together! You want mewithoutYou to stay together, right?

But hey, if it is their last album ever, it’s a great way to go out: being utterly turned into fire!

Although these are not necessarily my favorites, enjoi them nonetheless and then buy the album:

Bullet to Binary (Pt. Two) - Download - Stream
A Stick, A Carrot & String - Download - Stream

Myspace: www.myspace.com/mewithoutyou
Website: www.mewithoutyou.com

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  1. jakestimp’s avatar

    jakestimp on June 5, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    This is a great album. Until this one, Brother, Sister was my favorite, but now I don’t know. I wouldn’t say this has beat it out, but it’s at least tied with it.

    This album has certainly the best lyrics and storytelling of all their albums, and the music is creative and new, which is a good thing, but I do miss the heavy intensity of their previous albums.

    On a similar note, I never thought I’d say mewithoutYou’s music is “happy” or “bouncy,” but there are a handful of songs on this album that can’t escape the adjectives. It’s almost cheerful at times, dare I say it.

    This is a great album. I do feel slightly cheated, almost like mewithoutYou is just following the bandwagon of “quirky indie pop with multiple layers of strange instruments,” but if they are just hopping on a bandwagon, at least they do it really dang well.

    If this album had come out a year or two ago, it’d be revolutionary, but now it’s just really good.

  2. Disapointed...and mad as hell.’s avatar

    Disapointed...and mad as hell. on June 25, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    “I’d like you to ask yourself if you really wanted this album to sound just like any of their past ones.”

    No…but a little bit would be nice. It’s NOTHING like the albums prior. It’s like a frikin’ Disney folk album! This album is basically telling all their old fans who have loved them since A-B Life to f*** off. Thanks for nothing guys. I wasted my money. I promise you I won’t do it again.

  3. jon’s avatar

    jon on September 3, 2009 at 3:51 am

    you are a complete idiot… this is the best me without you album by far… you obviously didnt listen to the lyrics at all… music is about the way it makes you feel not their so called fan base… who cares if it sounds like the albums prior.. that doesn’t matter… its about writing good music that makes a difference, and this album makes a difference.. so f*** you

  4. jakestimp’s avatar

    jakestimp on November 12, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    Wow, you guys are really good at misunderstanding and throwing around random insults.