and the Glass Handed Kites

Album Review

Danish quartet Mew's dense and occasionally difficult And the Glass Handed Kites is old-fashioned only in the sense that it's meant to be eaten in a single sitting. This is not a single-driven record — though "Special," with its bouncy, moody chorus and octave vocal delivery, sounds like an emission from a time machine parked dead center within the heydays of early-'90s alternative rock — rather, it's a single organism. Kites takes the wisdom and volatility of the Delgados ("Chinaberry Tree"), the sonic scope of Sigur Rós ("White Lips Kissed"), and the angular guitar attack of early Ride and Dinosaur Jr. ("Circuitry of the Wolf") and melds them all into a cathartic post-rock epic that's so electrifying and unpredictable that it's almost impossible to take in with one or two listens. Fans of OK Computer-era Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, and Disintegration-era Cure will find And the Glass Handed Kites one of the most breathtaking things to come along since the dawn of the dream pop/post-punk genres themselves.