MEW @ Manning Bar

MEW

Manning Bar

Sydney, AU

September 12, 2017

MEW are a Danish alternative, experimental outfit pivoting between styles with a career spanning more than twenty years, across seven acclaimed studio albums, that classifies itself as “indie stadium” and has been described by others as possessing the musical grandiosity that leads people to classify them as progressive rock while they themselves stoically resist any identification with sub genres.

After their successful maiden voyage to Australia in 2015, MEW returned to showcase their extensive back catalogue and their new album Visuals.

MEW in a live context is a mélange of classic pop melodies and bombastic synths, swooning keyboards and lush high-pitched vocals that create a solemn, unassuming yet beautiful immersive microcosm of its own.

Grand and epic yet concise and economical, growing small melancholic melodies into full blown eruptions eliciting heartfelt crowd singalongs and at times indulging in bloodcurdling yet comforting walls of noise arias.

Performing with a deliberately down tuned stage presence in front of intensely imaginative visual projections created but lead singer, Jonas Bjerre, the music blends with the displays and creates a third layer of artistic expression that is bigger than the sum of its individual parts and creates another, deeper dimension of sensations.

A performance not unlike a warm embrace, which the audience, i.e. “Frengers” as per the portmanteau that MEW created for a hybrid of “friends” and “strangers” and the name of one of their albums, lapped it up.

Witnessing MEW performing with the passion of a metal band yet emitting their ethereal Scandinavian sounds result in a unique experience.

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Photos by T