Danish band MEW have been around for four albums, but like many under-the-radar artists they entered the musical arena when their sound was the polar opposite of the flavour of the day. Happily, the environment is changing, allowing them to release the epic and intricate And The Glass Handed Kites in Australia a year after its homeland appearance, and still have it sound fresh and exciting. Angel-voiced singer JONAS BJERRE skirts the term ‘nu-gaze’ in a long-distance chat with CHRIS HARMS.

Aside from the fact that ‘nu-gaze’ as a label is a questionable reclamation of the once-negative description ‘shoegaze’, guitar bands creating ethereal or dreamy soundscapes are too diverse to be lumped together under a lazy umbrella term. Of course, it does help to form a tenuous community of like-minded musical souls in a world of competing revivalists.

Garage Rock versus Shoegazing, Post-Punk versus Pop Punk…when the ears of modern listeners are overwhelmed with the increased accessibility of music via the internet, communities become important, a way to define difference and stake a claim in the musical landscape. And when taste swings a certain way, unpredictably as always in music, previously hidden doors are unlocked and suddenly the community doubles seemingly overnight.

Mew are one of the bands to benefit from this explosion of interest in sonic expansiveness. But unlike acts like Serena Maneesh (who emulate Isn’t Anything-era My Bloody Valentine so well Kevin Shields should be seeking royalty cheques), and Ulrich Schnauss (who creates a delectable electronic mimicry of Slowdive), Mew don’t owe the blueprint of their sound to past heroes. While influences are important, the resulting sound Mew make – a melange of soaring falsetto vocals, equal parts chiming and bludgeoning guitars, capricious time signatures, and swirling synthesisers – is unique enough move them to the periphery of the nu-gaze community. Like Sigur Rós, elements of other artists’ works can be heard in the mix, but the band’s intense devotion to their own ideas over fashion or easy pastiche sets them apart.

Sipping coffee in Stockholm, slightly removed from his Danish home, Mew vocalist Jonas Bjerre displays the understandable hesitation of the not-wanting-to-be-pigeonholed when confronted with the idea of a nu-gaze community.

“I don’t know… there are definitely bands out there that we like,” he begins in moderately accented English a far cry from his angelic singing voice. “But I don’t think there’s a lot of bands that sound like us. I believe all bands worth their salt have a unique sound to them, or have discovered something that is uniquely theirs. I hope the same is true of us.”

The originality and richness of Mew’s musical adventurism is easy to identify upon listening to And The Glass Handed Kites, so Bjerre can rest assured they won’t be mistaken for someone else. However, he also appreciates that the moods of listeners and musicians have become more accepting outside of the White Stripes and Franz Ferdinand hysteria of recent years, admitting, “when the last record came out (2003’s Frengers), in the UK there was big focus on the garage rock scene. Everything had to be very primitive – people wanted stuff to sound kinda like a demo. And we definitely didn’t fit in to that scene at all. But I think now there are more bands that have dreamlike qualities to their music, they maybe share a certain sensibility that we have. It feels nice that there are other people out there wanting to do similar things to what we do. It’s not so lonely.”

While bassist Johan Wohlert recently chose fatherhood over the fretboard, the band have been close friends for decades, and during the Frengers era they even decamped to London together, sharing a dingy flat while touring extensively. With nightmarish tales of enforced band closeness leading to animosity, break-ups, and general exhaustion a dime a dozen in rock music (witness the ‘we’re playing too much and spending too much time together’ whining that contributed to the end of voguish UK post-punks Test Icicles), I ask Bjerre how Mew have kept their sanity.

“We went to the same school since we were six years old, so we know each other quite well,” he says with a certain amount of pride. “I think it’s more a strength than a weakness, because a lot of the things we’ve gone through, we probably wouldn’t be able to stand each other if we don’t know each other so well. We have a lot of respect for each other, and we still enjoy each other’s company. And we never play with any other people – it’s always been this group. We don’t even know what it would be like to play with other musicians. And that bond helps us focus on what we want to do.”

This persistence of vision founded on shared ideas is key to what Mew create, and in particular inspired the calculated construction of the current album. From opening number Circuitry Of The Wolf to eighth track A Dark Design, the songs are an interlinked tapestry of melodic ebbs and flows, joining seamlessly and progressing with a fierce momentum. Bjerre explains the achievement as a specific task they set themselves.

“We had a few songs on the previous record that really changed direction a lot during the song. We felt it made for a much stronger song if when the song begins you don’t know where it’s going to end up. You’d have the element of surprise, you have the unexpected chord changes…and we really like that.

“I don’t want to say it’s like a journey, ‘cause that sounds so progressive rock. It’s more like a small outdoors trip,” he adds with humour. “And we wanted to make a whole record like that. We thought it would be a great challenge – the songs are chained together in many different ways – there are scales, there are key changes that needed to be worked out how we would do them, and tempo changes – so every transition is a bit different from the previous one.”

The structure suits Mew’s strange-bedfellows melding of dark, apocalyptic, lyrical imagery and uplifting, heaven-directed melodies, which Bjerre freely acknowledges.

“There’s always been a kind of escapism in our music and in the lyrics. Which I think is a good thing, because it derives from reality in a way, even though it’s abstract, and some it is even fairytale-like, like a dream almost. We’ve always been very attracted to that. And on this record, y’know, we’d gone through some stuff, and I think we all felt like making something that had a little more darkness in it. At the same time, we wanted it to be more dynamic in ways of mood and sound. So I think there are some parts of the record that are filled with hope and very optimistic. But there are definitely themes of fear, and fear of death, and broken love…”

The dynamism to which the singer refers also secured them a high-profile fan and collaborator in Dinosaur Jnr’s J Mascis – admired as a demi-god by the band – the long-haired alt-rock legend lending his vocals to the epic Why Are You Looking Grave? and An Envoy To The Open Fields. His inclusion perhaps defines Mew most effectively, in that it illustrates their recognisable inventiveness, creative inspiration, and determination to stay true to their vision, even if it means being selective about what their hero contributed.

“We just spent a day with him trying out different things, laying down some vocals…”

Bjerre pauses, then adds with a tiny but telling mix of embarrassment and pride, “He did some of his guitar solos as well, but…they didn’t really fit the album.”

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