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 tale wonderment (the sort of thing The Brothers Grimm might have written after a month on the road with Hope Of The States) then their fourth record 'Mew. and the Glass Handed Kites' is an 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 headfuck, flinging musical ideas, distorted nightmare images and heartbreak choruses at the listener with what at first seems to be a random ferocity. One minute we're sailing towards Valhalla on 'Chinaberry Tree''s crusade-rock stomp, the next we're being asked Why are you looking grave" by J Mascis over a My Bloody Valentine throb, the next we're in the middle of an ethereal ballad about hiding foxes. Initially it sounds like ten bands playing ten different albums at the same time, which we're tuned in and out of by some insane studio engineer; repeated listening, however, reveals a remarkably unified work that picks up the experimental baton of 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' and drenches it in Mew's unique other-worldy glisten..

How to hire Mew for an event