Mew - No more stories are told today...

Yes it was liked by critics and the audience, yes it was universally hailed as a very good album and yes it is not an unknown ''gem'' BUT, it is far more clever, intelligent and miles better then people are actually giving it credit for.

Upon its release no more stories (as I will call it from now on) was seen as a very good album, more or less scoring strong 3/5 and 4/5. The album in itself is a beautiful masterpiece of musicianship and songwriting, for that is what it actually is, a masterpiece. It works in parts and more importantly it is more than the sum of them. Having listened to the album for quite some time now rather intensely i can confidently conclude that I am still not the least bored with it. It simply keeps giving.

Mew has previously been a case of hit and miss for me. Overboard the quality in their albums have been rather inconsistent with about one third being really good, one third ''just good'' and the final third mediocre, this however is not the case with No more stories. It raises the bar across the board and the weak tracks are ''just very good''.

What is interesting is that there is a very clearly defined point in history where the root for this album was sown, which was the Yes album 90125 and more specifically the track Changes with whom it seems to share DNA. For whatever you may say, No more stories is an album that is the child of the more pop oriented progressive music from the 80's and i say that in the best possible way. By 80's i mean very round and ''fluffy'' production (though wonderfully not synthetic) relying quite heavy on synthesizers while the guitar takes a more comping rhythmic approach rather then leading. What Mew did with no more stories (i don't know if it was intently or not) that i really want to applaud them for is that it rhythmically is created in the same way as the best minimal funk by James Brown. What i mean by that is that it is conceived very much like a jigsaw puzzle where all the parts make a whole rather than simply having bits that exists as pure embellishments.

And that is actually exactly how you could sum up the entire album. Yes it is dense and complex but it isn't for the sake of it. It is like a puzzle of 1000 pieces where all the pieces does create a whole and make sense if you can be bothered to put the effort into it.

For fans of music, this is simply put a treat.