Bo Madsen of Mew Photo: Jacob Nelson
Holy shit! Pitchfork invited a singer to the festival after all!
Okay, that’s not entirely fair, and I’ll blame Saturday’s inexcusable Pains of Being Pure at Heart display of vocal vacuousness for that. Perhaps Kip Berman can hop a flight to Denmark after the festival to have a few (hundred) lessons with Mew frontman Jonas Bjerre, whose impressive vocal range and sterling intonation were the highlight of Sunday’s lineup.
The Danish prog-rockers got things under way with “New Terrain,” the understated first cut off their soon-to-be-released album, with Bo Madsen trading his guitar for bongos and Silas Jorgensen on keys instead of behind his usual drum kit. Keyboardist Nick Watts and bassist Bastian Juel then joined the trio for the remainder of the set, and savvy festival-goers forgoing the Grizzly Bear hour-of-critical-acclaim were treated to inspired Mew staples like “Comforting Sounds,” “Special,” and “Circuitry of the Wolf.”
Mew’s signature animations were absent from this show, the band having just flown in from Europe and unable to swing the logistics, but by the looks of the sea of intently bobbing heads surrounding me, it was clear they weren’t missed. For anyone who hasn’t seen/heard Jonas pull high D# after high D# out of thin air on “The Zookeeper’s Boy”, they’d do well to catch Mew when they are back in town at the Aragon at the end of August.
haha.. high D#s ..