Astronoid's "Air:" The Craft of Dream-Thrash

Review of Air by Astronoid (2016)

Several mentions of Mew in the post.  Follow this link to the wayback machine.

Spring Semester Roundup: Setting Roots in Heavy Weather

A little over a year ago, in the midst of the job search and EJ’s impending birth, I got so far behind on the blog that I finally dedicated one of my quarterly roundups to just catching up.  I have been using the blog to explore my history in recent weeks, which has kept it active, but I am at the point at which all the current events in my life have stacked up.  I am overwhelmed as to where to start. This roundup, then, will not only serve to record the music I've been listening to since spring break, but also the myriad events that have been happening up until now.

I’ll begin with My 94 year old grandmother moving up to Denton.  She found a good independent living facility very close to our house.  It has been very good to see her more regularly, especially with the girls.  My parents were to move up shortly thereafter into a house they were building outside of Aubrey, and in the midst of this move, my grandmother fell and broke her hip.  Mom traveled back and forth between here and Austin help her through this ordeal while my Dad finalized packing and selling the house - a dynamic not unlike that of my wife and I last Summer as I started my new job.

Concurrently, we are mere weeks away from the birth of our third child.  While EJ’s pregnancy was more difficult for my wife in the first trimester, our son has been harder on her in the third.  She has been battling insomnia, sleepwalking, and, more recently, high blood pressure.  Bedrest is in the forecast.  To say that we are ready for him to be born is an understatement.  Even though there will undoubtedly be the usual sleep deprivation and stress that occur with a newborn, the impact that he has had on my wife’s health has been worrying.  I, for one, am ready to see her recovery underway.  

The glue that held this whole crazy situation together has been my parents.  As difficult as our move was last year, their move has been as difficult if not more so.  They have selflessly dealt with my grandmother’s rehabilitation and helped an incredible amount with navigating my wife’s condition.  I can't tell you how fortunate I am to have them.

So clearly, there's a lot going on, with this stuff mostly playing in the background:

Michael Giacchino - Rouge One OST: Giacchino  has the unenviable job of being the first composer score a Star Wars movie other than John Williams. He does a respectable job, and although William’s distinctive touch is noticeably absent, the Rouge One OST checks enough boxes to decently fit into the world’s musical canon.

High Tides - High Tides:  A low-fi sequel to M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas, & Lost Ghosts.  It is perhaps a testament to the power of suggestion that analog synth music, which was once so closely associated with science fiction themes, could be employed so effectively to evoke a nostalgic Baywatch sunset.

Dungen - Allas Sak:  The biggest fault with Dungen is that they are consistently great, and due to that, paradoxically, I don’t give them enough credit.  I got Allas Sak a couple of years ago on a whim and it didn’t stick, but I revisited it and I think it is something special.

The New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions:  Also another band that is consistently great and have never really released a bad album.  Although they have an identifiable sound, they are clever with finding new and subtle variations on this formula that make each album distinct from the others.

Mew - Visuals:  As far as the writing goes, Visuals is significantly more consistent than its predecessor +/-.  The distinctive guitar playing of Bo Madsen is noticeably absent, however, and I miss the angular grit that he contributed to the band’s dreamy atmospheres.

Seabuckthorn - Turns. There's something very unique about this album, which I bought with the intention of employing as a late night feeding soundtrack for kid #3.  Turns centers on acoustic guitar, but the environments did it creates reach way beyond any preconceived notions of an acoustic guitar album. .

Johann Johannsson - Orphee: Johannson’s haunting soundtrack for Arrival inspired me to investigate his freestanding works, again with number 3 in mind.  My wife thought it was Sigur Ros, which wasn’t really a bad guess - Orphee captures a similar Icelandic desolation.

Sounds in Between - Identity Crisis. This album includes one of my former bandmates from Ethnos. He plays the oud on the album, which is a beautiful instrument with a distinctive range that is very difficult to balance in a lead role in a more Western setting.

North Atlantic Oscillation's Shimmering Light in the Fog

For a prog rock album to surpass the status of guilty pleasure or, even worse, token in my library, it can’t rest on the laurels of the past too much. Admittedly, I have my share of favorite retro-prog projects, but they are often consumed quickly and discarded. For this reason, I generally take greater notice when an indie or alternative site calls attention to a new prog band than when a progressive rock site heaps praises on the next big thing. Every now and then, though, a group comes along that breaks the expectations of what progressive rock is, but whose proggish adventurousness can’t be ignored by the more conservative communities. The last time this happened, I discovered Mew, a band that has evolved into one of my all-time favorites. I still lurk on progressive rock sites for rare instances like this.

Several months ago, I read a review of North Atlantic Oscillation’s Fog Electric that piqued my interest. It was, by its own admission, somewhat vague, but it indicated that instrumental histrionics were downplayed in lieu of songcraft in a “modern take on progressive rock.”  These descriptors begged me to dig further, so I looked up the video for Soft Coda.

Its triumphant, expansive tone captured my attention. Indeed, North Atlantic Oscillation did not fit the classical prog paradigm. They did, however, seem to have a distinctive sound and an exploratory veneer. Still, I was wary, so I subjected Fog Electric to a somewhat uncharacteristic vetting process. I began running the entire album on low-fi Spotify during late night chores. Only after several months did it finally earn its way into rotation.

What immediately set the band apart from a lot of current progressive music I run into is the translucent vocal approach of guitarist and keyboardist Sam Healy. I readily admit that Peter Gabriel was, and is, a conceptual genius, but after 40 years of reinvention, his flamboyant approach to progressive showmanship has resulted in some embarrassing melodrama. North Atlantic Oscillation neatly sidesteps this issue with a crystalline falsetto that has more in common with Brian Wilson than Fish. When it is stacked in harmony (and it often is), comparisons with the Beach Boys are impossible to ignore.

Like a lot of progressive rock, it takes a little familiarity for the listener to gain a foothold on what is brewing beneath the surface of Fog Electric. It is, however, not so aloof and self-indulgent that it holds the listener at arm's length. On the contrary, it’s immediately quite inviting and consistent. Granted, there are bombastic Marillion-esque bridges, Hackett-inspired guitar interludes, and cleverly crafted asymmetrical time signatures that are clearly derived from the progressive rock canon. By and large, however, North Atlantic Oscillation also compares quite favorably with more subdued explorations from contemporary torchbearers like M83, Sigur Ros, and Radiohead.



In actuality, many of these comparisons are feeble at best. During the vetting process, it was not so easy to draw a straight line between Fog Electric and anything else I was listening to, which is what made it so compelling. The more I unraveled it, the more influences I seemed to add to the list, until finally I decided that perhaps North Atlantic Oscillation might be onto something a bit more unique than I was giving them credit for. Fog Electric is, I think, something special: a much-needed, genuinely fresh, creative statement in the progressive rock genre that could also serve a much broader audience.

The Peaceful Haze of "Half Dreaming"

I moved back to Austin in the summer of 2009 to an apartment complex that I now remember as idyllic. It was very clean and well-kept, our neighbors were mostly pretty realistic and mature, and my new wife felt safe enough to walk to the gym in the morning dark. It was quite perfect for us at the time, and it represented the promise of the new life we had begun to lead in Austin. Additionally, I was finishing my Master’s thesis in ethnomusicology, and I was riding a wave of academic momentum. As I began to break free of the constraints of my study, I focused that energy on the study of Asian music. I took Japanese language lessons the following summer and studied the shakuhachi as an investment in my potential future as an ethnomusicological scholar.

A few months after that move, Mew’s album No More Stories are Told Today…… was released, which subsequently reignited my interest in the shoegaze bands that they cite as influences. I was already giving My Bloody Valentine a second run, but they had me banging my head against the wall. I could sense that Loveless had more going on than I understood, but I was still looking in the wrong places. I thought I would branch out, and, inspired by my increasing interest in Japanese music and a couple of great experiences with global pop compilations, I discovered Half-Dreaming, a collection of Asian shoegaze and dream-pop.

Considering what I had learned about global popular music, and contemporary Japanese music in particular, I should not have been surprised that Half Dreaming bears very few obvious markers of Asianness. If you are looking for a localized twist on shoegaze, this will probably be disappointing. Asian popular culture, however, has historically been very adept at consuming and repurposing cultural material. Viewed in this fashion, Half Dreaming is an engaging (if somewhat inconsistent) representation of a contemporary Asian style that emerged through the appropriation of a relatively small British scene.

Now I must confess that my experience and knowledge of shoegaze styles is quite blinkered. It was only this year that I finally began to see the fragile beauty of Loveless, so I am hardly an expert. My newfound appreciation for that landmark album, however, prompted me to revisit Half Dreaming.

Distorted, reverbed guitars are often foregrounded on the album, smothering the vocals in a dense fog. Of course, emphasizing effects pedals over vocals in this fashion was a trademark practice of My Bloody Valentine. Their innovation, however, was their ability to preserve a sense of melody without actually emphasizing the melodic material, creating a sublimely amorphous wash of fuzz with just a hint of singability. A few artists on Half Dreaming cover up the vocals by simply drowning them in the mix, which I think misses the point. There are several cases, however, that are able to capture this delicate, inverted balance.



The wall of sound that is associated with shoegazey music can detach the text from the listener, but it also harbors the potential to liberate as its hazy boundaries spill over and beyond the artists’ desire to subjugate it to their narrative. There are a few tracks, however, that apply this unique aesthetic to a more song-based approach, resulting in a compelling reinterpretation of 60s psudeo-psychedelia.



These tracks were the ones I more readily connected with back when I first got Half Dreaming, and now bring to mind otherworldly recollections of the white limestone walls and immaculate landscaping of that apartment complex.  Armed with a new perspective, however, my recent revisit to the collection has been more unilaterally gratifying.  

The Beginner's Guide to Mew

Some people who I know love music feel like they are in a bit of a rut when it comes to keeping abreast of current music releases.  When finding music becomes your responsibility, where do you start?   Undoubtedly, there is great music out there, but it never seems to compare to the beloved soundtrack of yesteryear – particularly that of the teenage years.  Many of us cling to the music that is attached to that time of our lives.  Even in the event we do find something new, we find we prefer it because it is reminiscent of something that is already in the realms of our already fossilized tastes.

One band that seems to have broken into that upper echelon of artists for me over the past five or six years is the Danish band Mew.  They look forward and back in a compelling way that fits well in my musical conception.  I got into them in around 2006, and I rank them up there with Hall & Oates, Tears for Fears, Rush, and King Crimson(My elementary, middle school, high school, and college favorites, respectively).  Their work is consistently epic, melancholy, aggressive, and thought-provoking, and if their YouTube clips are any indication, they are a great live band, as well (which I think is important, but the irony of using YouTube as a measure of this is not lost on me).  If you are looking for new music that may not be mainstream, you could do a lot worse than to at least check them out.  This post is meant to provide a framework for getting into Mew’s oeuvre. 

A quick note before I continue: the “album” is my unit of musical consumption.  I don’t listen to singles, and I don’t use playlists.  I buy CDs and rip them for soft use, but I mostly use the six-CD changer in my Scion XA for listening purposes.  I keep liner notes around in case I need to refer to them.  I understand that some of my more technologically snooty friends scoff at such affectations, but all I have to say to that is – you are being technologically snooty, not to mention elitist.  I connect with my music, and it does not really matter if its part of some amorphous cloud of streaming information or an 8-track, does it?  

That being said, Mew has three “albums” that I suggest.  My introduction to the band was “…And the Glass Handed Kites,” released in 2006. I wrote an Amazon review of that one that I still stand by, so check that out for a more in-depth look.  For now, let’s just say that I listened to “…And the Glass Handed Kites” nearly every day for a long time, and after several months I feared I would burn it out.  I purposely stopped listening to it, and to fill the gap I purchased its predecessor, “Frengers.”  Usually, when I get into a new band, I favor the album that serves as an introduction, but “Frengers” confounds this tendency.

“Frengers” is a little more digestible than “…And the Glass Handed Kites.”  Whereas the latter is a bit more conceptual and complex, the former is a consistent set of free-standing songs.  There were tunes that I initially gravitated toward, the first of which, “156,” is still my representative single of choice as an introduction to Mew.  It showcases their atmospheric side right alongside their more aggressive riff-driven aspects, while singer Jonas Bjerre’s characteristically dreamy approach unifies the entire song by floating above it.  Mew is also great with hiding complexity within accessibility, and for those with an affinity for the subtle might raise an eyebrow at the asymmetrical time changes and melodic bass work hidden in the mix.

Although “156” is an excellent example of Mew’s approach, every single song on “Frengers” reveals different components of the band’s approach.  Eventually, they have all evolved into my “favorite track on the album” for different reasons. Rather than give a track-by-track, I’ll just get to the point and state that “Frengers” is the one to get.   I still like “…And the Glass Handed Kites,” and if you like “Frengers” you will like it as well, but if you want a place to start, here it is. 

Their more recent work, the exhaustively titled “No More Stories/Are Told Today/I’m Sorry They Washed Away//No More Stories/ The World Is Grey/I’m Tired Let’s Wash Away,”  released in 2009, is more atmospheric and complex than even “…And the Glass Handed Kites.”  It is great, and has its moments, but it lacks an inexplicable confidence that the other two exude.  Bassist Johan Wolhert left the band before this recording, and this may have had an impact. “No More Stories…” is also noticeably heavier on texture and lighter on intensity.  There is no “Snow Brigade” or “Special,” which I had a hard time adjusting to.  Don’t misunderstand, I do like and suggest the album, but in comparison to the other two, it might not be the best starting point.

Mew has also recently released a “Best of” compilation called “Eggs are Funny.”  The tracklisting is pretty substantial for this collection, but being an album guy, I rarely get into “Greatest Hits” releases - they always feel jagged and incoherent.  As a unit, albums provide me with a context that enhances all of its parts, so in my opinion, anyone who is genuinely curious about Mew should just get “Frengers” and go from there.

One last thing – I need to correct an unrelated oversight from the January Listening list.  After reading Paul Berliner’s “Thinking in Jazz,” I purchased Art Blakey and the Jazz Messenger’s “Moanin’,” and it turned out to be one of my favorite listening experiences early in January.  I put it away with the intent of letting it stew in my subconscious for awhile.  “Moanin’” is a great, classic jazz recording, and it is a travesty that I forgot to include it on the list.