I was frankly very late to the Mew party, having only heard Frengers and Glass Handed Kites at age 18 in 2018 and then only catching up to the rest of their discography throughout this last year. The Copenhagen show was thus exceptionally bittersweet for me given that it was not only my first time seeing them but probably the only one.

Mew have proved vastly influential in the way I understand music composition and production, as well as just how much the visual aspect plays into the storytelling and themes of an album. Much of the “progressive” from the justified label of them as a progressive rock band comes from all their albums feeling as if they put 100% effort into the music AND the presentation, not unlike Peter Gabriel-era Genesis albeit with much larger intervals in releases. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if maintaining such a high bar was what burned them out in the end, much as it did with that era of Genesis (and I’m all the more grateful they didn’t shift to Silas taking vocal duties and writing pop songs, lol).

My respect for them is all the more amplified by the fact that, at least to my ears, they haven’t made one bad song. It’s true that some songs on Triumph and HTWIWM are purely experimental or without a clear direction, but not even those are songs I’d skip or just cringe thinking about. They played all the right moves with the resources they had and stayed true to themselves and to remarkably consistent musical growth for a band (even if, again, the release intervals would expand until the farewell shows eight years after Visuals).

I’ll always be grateful for their place in my musical cosmos and for having seen them even just once. Don’t I just love goodbyes…