Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Philadelphia's mewithoutYou are an anomaly. Their music is artsy avant-rock. Their new album, Catch For Us The Foxes, seems to have its syntax out of order. You have to read it a few times for it to make sense. The phrase was taken from the Bible, and it's an obscure reference to their faith.
"It's not like John 3:16, where you automatically know what it means," says guitarist Mike Weiss. "That's a big reason it's an acceptable title for us. It's obscure, and won't drive anyone away from checking us out."
Yes, mewithoutYou are all Christians, but they don't use their faith as a vehicle to promote their band. They're the kind of band that requires multiple listens before you go, "Oh, I get what these guys are doing!" But once you get through the work of listening to Catch For Us The Foxes, you will emerge fully appreciative of it.
Of the new album, Weiss says, "It's more diverse. Instead of choosing one solid direction to go in, we decided to write songs, and let everyone's individual tastes influence each song. It's a very driven, rhythmic sounding record with thought-provoking lyrics, which might challenge you to interpret them."
The music isn't the only exciting thing about mewithoutYou. The quintet used to perform amidst crushed flower petals on stage, which they took from dumpsters of wholesalers, thus giving them "new life" as part of the stage props.
"Our singer would come out holding them and then destroy them all over the stage." The act hasn't displayed any flower power recently, Weiss says. "We're keeping it simple these days, but if we get the chance, we'll do something different when we come up with the means."
It's that type of behavior that sets mewithoutYou apart from other avant-rock bands. The album's vibe is neo-new wave, but it's not too steeped in the '80s. The lyrics are often delivered in a singing-talking style, beefing up mewithoutYou's definitive quirks.
"It's thinking man's rock," Weiss explains. "It has a Talking Heads style to it."
Being a little "out there" might seem like an easy way to attract audiences, but it's actually harder to get kids with short attentions spans to delve into things that are left of center - but the group believes that their sincerity is what draws fans to them.
"Audiences don't expect what they see," Weiss says. "It's always attractive when someone is sincere in their music. We perform seriously, and don't go through the motions."
By Amy Sciarretto - Mean Street
Discography
Catch For Us The Foxes
10/05/2004
[A-->B] Life
06/06/2002
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Philadelphia: The City of Brotherly Love. The year was 1682 when English Quaker, William Penn coined his settled land with the motto. His vision was that the area would become a place where anyone of any color or background or belief could live together in peace and harmony, and ultimately brotherly love. It seems there could be no better-suited place then for the birth of a band called mewithoutYou.
The one thing that we all agreed on before we started writing this album was the idea of helping and healing, explains guitarist Mike Weiss of the bands new album, Catch For Us the Foxes. Ill be happy if someone listens to it and feels a sense of hope in their life in some small strange way.
The five members of mewithoutYou dont just poetically style their ideals to music; They live these ideals out amongst the masses. A dimly lit stage covered with floral blossoms sets the mood for what will become an energetic, destructive, and exhausting performance. Lead singer Aaron Weiss flails himself about the stage, changing moods from joy to frustration, taking the intrigued crowd on his personal roller coaster of emotions, but all the while vocally extending his message of love. We all need each other, Weiss states simply.
The world was first introduced to mewithoutYou in the summer of 2002 with their critically acclaimed debut release, [AB] LIFE. Drawing quick comparisons to artistic masterminds like At the Drive-In and Interpol, the album set the standard for what was to come from the gifted group. Now with the completion and October 2004 release of their newest full-length project, Catch For Us the Foxes,produced by Brad Wood (Fire Theft, Smashing Pumpkins, Pete Yorn), fans will get a chance to witness the obvious growth to this album from the last. With their insatiable knack for writing both engaging lyrics and music, mewithoutYou have created an anomaly: a record worthy of both thought and dance.
What you will hear with this new record are a lot of new textures both vocally and with our instruments, Mike Weiss notes. There are songs that we wrote two years ago right after [AB] LIFE was released and songs that came together a week or two before we left for the studio. It really covers a lot of different phases that we moved in and out of over the past two years. All the songs share Aarons amazing way of writing lyrics though, and the almost blind passion that we get out of performing.
Their performances have become so intriguing, in fact, that over the course of the past two years, mewithoutYou have gained a reputation for beginning tours as an opening band and working their way up to the headlining position. Audiences come in hopes of not just mere entertainment, but something deeper, something thought provoking.
And in the end, nearly everything mewithoutYou stands for can be taken back to that simple vision of love and harmony William Penn visualized for the community he helped create. The first song, Torches Together, I wrote it mostly after coming home from the Bruderhof, a community living in New York, lead vocalist Aaron Weiss states, To love your neighbor as yourself is the most important thing in all the world.
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