In a move that may be shocking to some of our instrumental fans,
Burnt Toast Vinyl has issued the vinyl for for mewithoutYou's
Brother, Sister. They're everyone's favorite leftist, biodiesel
bus-driving, freegan post-hardcore rockers and all around great
guys. We've known Aaron and Greg for years, both having played in
an earlier band with an ep release on btv in the label's infancy.
Brother, Sister is one of our favorite records of 2006
and we're very proud to be able to give it a proper release on vinyl.
It's the swan song release of their career--an indie rock opus that
challenges their listening base,
utilizing lush layers of melody, mixing in a bit of post-hardcore
style, and quickly shifting gears back and forth, creating a unique
amalgam of styles.
“I do not exist,” mewithoutYou frontman
Aaron Weiss mutters to open the band's third full-length, Brother,
Sister, setting the tone for an album that explores cosmological,
existential, and interpersonal crises with equal aplomb. However,
while Weiss has become known for his stream-of-consciousness lyrics
communicated via his half-sung/half-shouted vocals, Brother,
Sister is a huge progression for Weiss personally, as well
as the rest of the Philadelphia-based band—guitarist Michael
Weiss, guitarist
Christopher Kleinberg, bassist Greg Jehanian and drummer Rickie
Mazzotta.
In a musical landscape dominated by genre divisions and marketing
campaigns, Brother, Sister is simply an album made by five
people who create art without any limitations—and that's what
makes it so important. While the album retains mewithoutYou's instantly
recognizable post-hardcore sound, Weiss' vocals and the implementation
of atypical instrumentation are the most instantly recognizable
shifts from 2004's Catch For Us The Foxes. “A lot
of our old stuff is all shouting and that's still there,”
explains Weiss. “But I've never really listened to heavy music;
with this record, my goal was to make music that I wanted to listen
to. Not everyone agreed at first, but I wanted to incorporate different
types of melodies and instrument—and those are probably some
of my favorite moments on the record.”
While Foxes and mewithoutYou's debut [A
-> B Life] were rife with delay-driven guitars, explosive
drumming and driving songs, the beauty of Brother, Sister
alternately lies in its subtleties. Opening with a lone Wurlitzer
and minimal percussion, “Masses of Men” crams more emotion
into three-minutes than screaming ever could; “The Dryness
and the Rain” incorporates an middle-eastern orchestra for
its chorus; and the quasi-ballad “A Sweater Poorly Knit”
is probably the most epic song the band have ever crafted, featuring
acoustic guitar, accordion, harp, flugelhorn, and trombone into
a musical
journey that shifts from beautiful to foreboding and back again
seamlessly. The harp and organic imagery easily call to mind Joanna
Newsom's Milk Eyed Mender. "And it's light and dark
as honeydew and pumpernickel bread", "Take the fingers
from your flute, weave your colored yarns, and boil down your fruits
to preserves in mason jars", "The books are overdue and
the goats are underfed" are phases that exemplify some sort
of simplistic freak folk poetic mastery.
This is a beautifully instrumented album featuring flugelhorn and
trombones from members of Anathallo (Nettwerk), upright bass from
Orlando Greenhill of Create! (Sounds Are Active), beautiful harp
playing from Nashvile based Timbre, tribal drumming/vocals from
psalters, and vocals from Jeremy Enigk. The rich production was
done by Brad Wood who has also produced albums for Codeine, Seam,
Sunny Day Real Estate, Liz Phair, Hum, Smashing Pumpkins, and The
Sea and Cake. At home on the vinyl, the drums especially sound warm
and monstrous. It's a deluxe format white vinyl with an oversized
poster lyrics insert that does justice to the cover painting from
Vasily Kafanov.
mewithoutYou has toured extensively over the past
two years with bands such as Thursday, The Blood Brothers, Coheed
and Cambria, Minus the Bear, Brand New, Sparta, Piebald, Jeremy
Enigk, and Burnt Toast Vinyl's own Unwed Sailor.
“The ultimate result of listening to Brother, Sister--other
than the nagging temptation to...listen to it all over again--is
the realization that mewithoutYou have written an album that will
be with our generation for quite some timee to come. And, trust
us; we don’t normally say shit like that.” --Jason
Schreurs, Wonka Vision
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