Mew - ‘Why Are You Looking Grave?’ (Evil Office/Epic) Released 06/02/06
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The reason we’re looking grave,
Mew, is that we’re struggling to pick out the essence of a song in this wall of Marillion-meets-Muse sound. That’s not to say it’s a totally joyless pursuit – how the almost shoegazerly vocal from
Jonas Bjerre, for example, suddenly finds itself soaring un-scaled peaks (aided by backing vox from a certain
J Mascis of
Dinosaur Jnr) without the smallest hint of a struggle is a thing of effortless wonder. But, overall, it’s not enough. A limited edition of the single contains 8 versions of the song at various stages of completion, so fans can purr over the B-sides-as-documentary concept. Cheers lads. All we need now is for Mr Kipling to bring out a box of his classic apple pies containing one overcooked one and 5 half baked ones and we’d have a real party on our hands…