And the Glass-Handed Kites

To call Mew "sort of surreal," of course, is like saying Bill Gates is "reasonably well off." If the sprawling, soaring bliss-rock of their breakthrough third album Frengers (2003) --particularly the ecstatically icy space ballets 'She Came Home For Christmas' -- and NME Single Of The Week 'Comforting Sounds' -- projected a sense of glacial fairy tales wonderment then their fourth record and the Glass Handed Kites is even greater leap into the unknown. Redefining the concept of an album -- and, indeed, of a concept album -- and the Glass Handed Kites is an eccentric 60 minute rock mind twister, flinging musical ideas, distorted nightmare images and heartbeak choruses at the listener with what at first seems to be a random ferocity.