Interview: Mew
Before the US release of their latest album, And the Glass Handed Kites, Mew was enjoyed in the States by a select few who were lucky enough to discover this Danish foursome. But now, after the Columbia Records release, the band has steadily been gaining momentum and gaining new fans left and right. Straight off their first US tour (and on the eve of another set of dates in the states this fall) we got to put some questions to singer/guitarist Jonas Bjerre about the history of the band and what may be coming up on the horizon.
Mew - Special - MP3
Is this your first US tour?
It is indeed. This is something we have been looking forward to for some time. I think touring in the US is a sort of European dream for bands.
This is your first album to get a proper release in the US, are there plans to re-release the other ones here?
I'm not exactly sure yet. I certainly hope so!
How did you guys first come together? What is the story of Mew?
Bo and I went to school together since we were 6 and 5 years old, respectively. It was a real hippie school, you know, with African chanting and drumming, Gössel gymnastics and stuff like that. Around the 7th grade, we were maybe 12 or 13, we were sat in groups each designated to create something "artistic". At that point I didn't really know Bo, but during this experiment we discovered a common interest in alternative music and film. We ended up making a 15-minute long pretentious art film shot on Video8, most of which consisted of us introducing the film itself over and over and over again in slow motion. When we started high school we decided to form a band.
You list some pretty diverse influences, are all of the favorites shared by all the members of the band?
Not really. But we definitely have some common ground. In the beginning it was the indie rock scene, bands like Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine. But at the same time growing up in the eighties did leave its mark on us, Prince and Prefab Sprout I would say were equally influential on us. But we do have separate inspirations as well. For example, Silas likes a lot of African music, which the rest of us can enjoy up to a certain point but after a while, not so much.
This album was a concept record of sorts right?
It's definitely been called a concept album, but not by us. I guess there is a "concept" in stringing the songs together the way we did. And lyrically there are themes of fear, dreams and hope present throughout.
How long did it take you to create And the Glass Handed Kites?
We toured pretty extensively with our last album Frengers. After the last gig we did on that tour we went directly into writing, which suited us fine because we were hungry to make new music. We spent around 2-3 months writing in our house in London, based on ideas that we'd been playing around with on tour, then went to LA and recorded it over a 4-month period. We then eventually ended up mixing the album three times(!) because of a few technical experiments that went awry. So it took a long time.
Does the title of the album have any meaning?
Yes, it has several meanings. The most apparent one has to do with the image of the kite, made of fragile canvas but soaring majestically into the air regardless. We like the dualism of that. The hands of glass are symbols as well, but they are more obscure and have references in different parts of the lyrical content.
You guys are a fairly large band in your homeland of Denmark, is it weird to have to start over in a different country?
No, it's not weird. We tour many different places and there are many levels of success. We recently did a show in Rome and the album had just come out there as well. It's a very enjoyable experience playing to people who may know the music but has never experienced it live before.
The album is actually a year old, are you currently working on new music for a new album?
We tend to always write when we have a bit of time off. Even if it's only four days, there will probably be some ideas emerging. Right now it's hard to say how long we'll be touring until we finally go into complete writing mode.
How did you guys get to work with J. Mascis, and with him being such an influence how was it to work with him?
Bo met him years ago when he performed in Copenhagen. This was when the band had just started out and we were beginning to get a little buzz going in the underground. Bo helped out J because J had lost his luggage in the airport or something. He also gave him a Mew shirt which he wore that night. That was a big thing for us!
He did a show at the House of Blues while we were recording there, we spoke to him after the show and he agreed to come into the studio and do some recording. It was great, we had a lovely time. J is a brilliant guy and has a sublime sense of humor.
Your sound is very full on record, is that something you strive to recreate live? Or is the live show a completely different thing?
We do strive to sound as dynamic live as on record. It varies how much stuff we can bring out though, at our fullest we have a trumpet player with us live but that's usually not the case. It's a tough question for me to answer because I have never seen a Mew show from the audiences point of view. But based on what people have told me we do sound close to the record, it's certainly not a completely different thing.
The rest of the Scandinavian scene seems to get more press than Denmark, is that fair? Are there fewer worthy bands coming out of there?
Well we were always standing in the shadow of Sweden who had great music export since Abba. But in recent years I think Denmark has been gaining on our neighbors ever so slowly. The labels in Denmark are a part of that, new indie labels and that sort of thing. Also, it seems like the labels have finally realized that they should sign bands that sound original rather than the ones that are ripping off the UK scene from 4 years ago... I think there are some amazing bands in Denmark, most of the really good ones though, are still unknown.
Most Scandinavian bands sing in English, is there ever any worry that part of your culture is being left out of your music?
Actually there is a big trend nowadays with Danish singing. Some bands pull it off nicely but sadly most of them don't. There is a tendency for the lyrical content to become really low brow stupid, almost too similar to daily speech and that doesn't make for very poetical content. For our part, we chose to write in English mostly because that's our second language (taught in School from the age of 6) and because we grew up listening to English and American music. Although most of the lyrics are less a direct narrative than a string of images that are up for interpretation, we do want people to understand them and by writing in Danish we would alienate a lot of people. I enjoy the fact that I can blatantly play around with the English syntax, being a foreigner and all. I'm kind of excused ha ha. But we've also written songs in gibberish and in Japanese, we're not forced to write in English. I wouldn't say that Danish culture is present in our lyrics per say, except for, perhaps, a relation to the fairy tale feel of H.C. Andersen.
Was Columbia the first label in the states that expressed interest in the band?
Before we were signed in the UK we had interest from a bunch of different labels, some of them from the US, but it's hard to say for sure how much of that interest was really real. In the beginning when you start getting noticed there will be a lot of people expressing interest, but you have to take things with a grain of salt.
- Jake Haselman | 2006-08-28
