Relatively unknown outside of Denmark except to a devoted few, Danish band Mew have been blowing overseas audiences away for years with their stunning surreal performances both in and out of the studio. With their fourth LP,
And the Glass Handed Kites getting international distribution it seems as if 2006 is the year Mew will finally receive the awareness they deserve. And deserve it they do, as .
..Kites is a soaring excursion into post and prog rock that manages to take some of the best elements from both of these genres, and twist them into entirely new and exciting forms. Lifelounge caught up with guitarist Bo Madsen, to have a chat about the past, present and future of Mew.
DK: And The Glass Handed Kites is a beautiful ethereal album, where does the inspiration for your music stem from?BM: Thank you very much, I think the inspiration comes from our own songs in a way, its been developing in that direction for a period of time, and when I look back on it now, you can hear on the record before And The Glass Handed Kites, called Frengers, some songs pointing in this direction. So I think it’s a natural progression for us to take this whole song writing idea to the edge.
DK: I admit, I actually hadn’t heard of Mew before the release of this album, so I was wondering what the musical progression has been like for the band until now?BM: We came out at the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties when there wasn’t a lot going on, I was personally listening to a lot of Prince and he started going bad at that time. There just wasn’t much left to listen to. Then Nirvana came in 1991, and that just kicked off a whole wave of new bands, like Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine. So it kind of came from those bands to begin with. This is our fourth record, and it takes a long time to establish your own style. I mean, I think we always had our own style, but it’s been getting more and more unique with every record that we make.
DK: You guys have been favourably compared to artists like My Bloody Valentine, Sigur Ros and Mogwai, are you happy to be associated with those bands in the contemporary post and prog rock scenes?
BM: I mean if you ask anybody they probably wouldn’t necessarily agree with the comparisons, I mean there are tiny elements in the music of bands like My Bloody Valentine. Again those influences were a starting point a long time ago together with a lot of other things, like Prince and The Pet Shop Boys, but you can definitely sense the atmospheric vibes from them. In regards to the whole prog thing, I don’t really notice the prog elements on the record; to me it’s making a pop record. We never listen to prog music ourselves, and the only band that we listen to that could be defined as prog would be Genesis, and I think it’s the pop element of that band that we like. I like to describe us as the world’s only indie stadium band, that’s the best way I can describe it, I mean it sounds a bit weird, but that’s what it is.
DK: What is the creative climate like over in Denmark, is it thriving, and has it had any influence on the music you guys have made?BM: Not really, our first album came out the same week the first Aqua record came out. Then this plastic pop thing dominated for a few years in Denmark. So we were really oddballs. Then three or four years ago we were signed to Sony in England, and the Raveonettes got signed in America a few months later, and Junior Senior got signed as well, and that started a whole self belief in the music scene in Denmark that hadn’t been there before. So right now its much better than it’s been, because people are looking at bands that have been signed and are thinking, “The bands from Denmark that are having the most success are just bands that are trying to be themselves, and not trying to sound like a lot of other bands.” So these are important lessons to learn, and the scene has a self-confidence right now that it hasn’t had before, and is probably the best it’s ever been. There are some really great bands in the making.
DK: You guys met when you were quite young, how do you think growing up together has affected the direction the band has moved in?
BM: I think it’s a big part of it, I mean communicating is what it’s all about when you’re making music together. We have a great understanding of each other. It really important when you’re making a record to have a lot of discussions about it so you end up with a good idea of the direction you want to go in. That’s a great strength of ours, and a definite benefit because we actually spend more time talking about the ideas behind the music than actually playing. It’s a big part of how we hang out with each other as friends.
DK: So you have a very unified vision for the band.BM: Yeah, I mean we do fight quite a lot, but in the end we do have a very specific idea of what we want.
DK: How does the song writing process work for you guys, the album works as an arranged piece of music flowing from one track to the next, so how do you go about creating such an epic album?BM: It takes quite a long time for us to write songs, because we want every song to have their own characteristics and personality, but we also want them all to string together. It has to have good melodies, rhythms and sounds in many layers, so it takes a long time to put all that shit into the song! It kind of works where someone will come in with a part and we’ll play with the parts and start arranging. A lot of the parts are written before we go into the space, but they change a thousand ways once we start playing with them, so it’s definitely a group effort, and we’re not confined to only having input into the parts we play as individuals. It takes a long time, but it’s interesting and I think that’s how it ends up being the best creatively, and helps us to keep pushing each other forward on our instruments.
DK: Listening to the album, I immediately got a real sense of joy throughout the music, although in your bio, it says that a lot of the songs are inspired by Jonas’ nightmares, so is there a specific emotion that you are trying to convey?BM: There is a general sense of the conditions of man, and a lot of it is melancholy. I think this is interesting because it addresses both the happy and sad sides of life at the same time, and therefore has the most impact. I do think its both very joyful and very sad, it tries to grab everything, which is why it has been put together as one long song. It tries to capture how our emotional lives are ever changing, and mimic those fluctuations in order to build a bridge between us and the people listening to the music. We want them to realise that they’re not alone, and can take comfort from the songs and hopefully be happy. It’s interesting, I remember listening to Sigur Ros a few years ago, and getting really sad, but afterwards I always felt really happy, so that’s how it works I think.
DK: The footage of your shows looks amazing, how heavily involved in the visual aspect of your shows are you guys?BM: It’s kind of weird, because we were really focussed on how we could be a good live band, and I feel that we’re finally really good live, but we were really bad to begin with. We spent most of our time tuning guitars between songs and I think even our parents walked out of our shows. We played a lot and I think we realised that it gets kind of boring just watching guys play instruments for a couple of hours, so we tried to create this place you could walk into, like a local club that is transformed for a night, and make it like a new world, where everything is completely foreign. I think bands that can create a whole atmosphere and a whole world around themselves, with intertextual references, are definitely more interesting for their fans to go to, because it is a constant process of discovery.
DK: Any plans to tour to Australia in the near future?BM: We really want to come, but unfortunately it all depends on how the record is doing. I mean if the record starts doing well, we’ll definitely be coming. Hopefully we’ll get some airplay and we’ll be out there because we really want to come and go swimming with the sharks and all that stuff.
Mew’s new album
And the Glass Handed Kites is out now through Red Label.