This week MewithoutYou announced that they were splitting up, which was sad news. I took far too long to get into them properly and have only seen them play festival/support sets. I got their first two albums in 2007 when I first heard them and then neglected them entirely for five years until I found their fourth album in Banquet one afternoon. I can't blame anyone but myself for that; I imagine I missed out on seeing them play some incredible shows in the UK in the years between. Still, I can be pleased I did get to see them, that I had such a great time the two times I did see them, and that I can go back to their back-catalogue whenever I please.
In 2016 Big Scary Monsters put out this lovely reissue of their fifth album from 2012 and I picked it up in amongst a fairly large order of other albums I'd been meaning to pick up for a while. I didn't play it straight away, but I was into it as soon as I did - throughout there are highlights, like February, 1878, Cardiff Giant and Fox's Dream of the Log Flume (a song that could easily fit on their first two albums), but it was the closer, All Circles, that really stood out on the first play, and became the reason I played it a lot in the following weeks - I love the simple repeating lyric: "All circles presuppose they'll end up where they begin / but only in their leaving can they come back round". The brass instruments in the outro of Nine Stories is an inspired choice too. In the three years that have passed since then, it's probably become the MWY album I turn to most often, although they all get a good amount of play.
Format: 12", picture sleeve, booklet
Tracks: 11
Cost: £15 new
Bought: Big Scary Monsters website
When: 07/03/16
Colour: Blue splatter
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
