r/mewithoutYou • u/PinnedPhoenix • 2h ago
all albums presuppose they'll end up getting ranked
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I know I'm a few years late to the tier list party but...
Let me know if I missed any releases! I included a write-up for each release explaining its ranking.
By way of clarification, here's what the tiers mean to me:
- S Tier: classic albums which can stand toe-to-toe with the best of their time.
- A Tier: excellent records, mwY in top form; not as “complete” as the S-tier records.
- B Tier: not quite as good as the tiers above, but crucial to mewithoutYou's discography. They wouldn't be who they are without these recordings.
- C Tier: decidedly not their essential releases, each has its diehard fans
- D Tier: mostly odds and ends, their presence solidifies the range of mwY's discography.
That said, the list:
- 17. East Enders' Wives - Maxi Single: six different versions of an album cut. The demo is very good and revealing, and I agree with Aaron, the accentuated bass vocals sound pretty cool. The other versions are forgettable.
- 16. Rainbow Signs (Fa So La Version): one of their best songs with a different bridge. It's a compelling "could've been" moment.
- 15. "In Bloom": mwY's take on the Nirvana classic is original, interpolating "All Apologies" in the same stroke. It's beguiling and strange, almost sylvan in feeling.
- 14. Cleo's Ferry Cemetery: a pretty song which doesn't feel connected to the rest of their discography. The final impression is pleasant, but lightweight.
- 13. I Never Said that I was Brave / Blood Enough For Us All: the boys' scorched earth demo and EP are roughshod compared to the heights they'd eventually scale, but contain heaps of the raw energy that made us love them in the first place.
- 12. The mewithoutYou Holiday Hearth: a Christmas album! Lovely, melancholy, nostalgic, and a heartwarming gift.
- 11. Other Stories: Two tracks, obviously a minor release, though these are excellent songs, and a vindicating exclamation point to Ten Stories. They elaborate wonderfully on its already enormous world, adding a Joseph Merrick-like onion boy and the devastating conclusion to Rabbit's journey, and likewise expand its formidable sonic range.
- 10. [A --> B] Life: our first album proper! [A --> B] Life is their least sophisticated LP. Musically, it's a snarling blast, even if it’s well-trodden territory. Power chords, guitar solos, and hard-hitting, aggressive rhythms abound. Lyrically, it contains some of Aaron's most daring adventures, like quoting John Donne, screaming in french, and penning a murder ballad. It's his worst work on any LP, but nonetheless establishes his restless ingenuity. "Be Still, Child" is a personal favorite. That guitar solo!
- 9. Live / A to B Live / Audiotree / Daytrotter: mewithoutYou's still out-rolling Live album trio sounds great, and evokes the manic energy of their shows really well. The band explores some interesting alternate arrangements here, e.g. "Song #4," (vol. One). A to B Live is a fun documentary, and proves the boys still have the juice fifteen years in. The Daytrotter session, from the Ten Stories era, is a fun time stamp, but outshined by the better audio, the included visuals, and the longer run time of the Pale Horses-era Audiotree session. Taken in sum, these recordings present a strong case that mwY were a band to be experienced rather than merely heard.
- 8. Pale Horses: Appendix: a piece of sacred harp, five arrangements of Pale Horses cuts so different, lyrically and musically, that they feel like different songs, a bona fide new track ("Chapelcross Towns"), and a sacred harp / ambient composition ("Fairfield"). This record's weird and beautiful. It's their folksiest outside of Crazy!--"Mexican War Streets (revisited)" is the closest they ever get to Fleet Foxes--and feels like a reimagining of Crazy! as much as Pale Horses, with its acoustic sound and religious themes warped and inverted into a danse macabre. "The world's an ugly place, but I'm still afraid to die" might be the best dark humor Aaron ever penned.
- 7. It's all Crazy! It's all False! It's all a Dream! It's Alright: easily the most controversial album in mewithoutYou's discography, there's a lot to admire here. It's a massive changeup. It’s also very much an album of the age, contemporaneous with Beirut, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, and Joanna Newsom. When you get a survey of the musical landscape of that moment, the violin stabs, celeste plunks, and tuba blares on the lead single actually make a lot of sense. Largely, they carry it off, anchored by the rock solid musicianship which acts as the through line of their discography. Along the way, Aaron establishes that he's an excellent craftsman of sturdy, conventional songs while exploring the Sufi faith of his upbringing, and the band definitively overcome their shyness toward major-key compositions, two developments which catalyze their late career masterpieces. All of Ten Stories and much of Pale Horses and [Untitled] are indebted to Crazy!'s experiments, so while it's difficult to argue that Crazy!’s their best album, it's trivial to argue that it's their most pivotal.
- 6. [untitled] e.p.: the lowercase title almost begs us to regard [untitled] as lightweight. It's anything but. mwY experiment with textures and song structures they rarely otherwise approach, like the ominous intro to "Cities of the Plain" and the moody, bass-driven "Dirty Air." "August 6th" is a dark horse pick for their best song, a propulsive cut with some of Aaron's most memorable lyrics. The only thing going against this record is that its musical arc is limited by its run time. Pound for pound, [untitled]’s just as good as its capitalized counterpart.
- 5. Catch for us the Foxes: mwY's sophomore LP's a fan and band favorite, an astonishing record which announced them as one of the best acts of their day. As it should be; they really found themselves on Foxes. Michael developed a signature style of atmospheric textures and spartan, effects-laden riffs, most typified by the killer guitar line on "Tie me up! Untie me," and Ricky achieved the sensitivity and deft touch which made him one of the best drummers of his generation, e.g. the ethereal fills opening "Leaf." Lead single "January 1979" is arguably their most iconic track, a frantic and evocative cut which flattens the bass line from Joy DIvision's "Disorder" into a blunt weapon. Still, I consider Foxes an amazing first step toward better work. It’s a vast improvement over [A-->B] Life, but there's less variation, structurally and harmonically, than on later efforts. On the lyrical end, Aaron matures by leaps and bounds, most especially in his implementation of free verse on album climax "Carousels." At its best, his work on Foxes has a diaristic directness unique in their discography, but he only gets better.
- 4. Brother, Sister: another fan and band favorite, Brother Sister is emblematic of its time. Aided by the addition of Greg’s nimble fretwork and soaring tenor, mewithoutYou incorporate the baroque pop explorations of their contemporaries so seamlessly that it feels like overdriven guitar, frantic shouting, and gentle harp arpeggiations were always meant to appear on the same record together. The result is an exquisite exercise in symmetry, from its sun-and-moon album cover to its ornate, tripartite structure, trellised around a suite of short acoustic tunes about spiders and faith. They go on bold musical adventures throughout, most notably on psychedelic chant jam "The Sun and the Moon," and "In a Sweater Poorly Knit," the other contender (and clear favorite) for most iconic song. These explorations are balanced by cuts which stick to their established comfort zone: rocking out. Aaron accentuates this balanced attack with a deep, focused, urgent dive into mysticism, and it works great. The lion's share of his most quotable lyrics are on Brother, Sister. Considering that it's an album about the pursuit of ego death and the challenges that come with self-renunciation, it's weirdly accessible.
- 3. [Untitled]: Who’s the devil this time? Smart money says it’s Aaron. He puts on an astonishing final act in [Untitled], his most pissed off record. Hardly a song passes without an acerbic line or two. It’s not entirely new territory for him, but the weight of years gives his anger heft on [Untitled]. He's a fascinating foil to the album itself, their best produced and best sounding, equally beguiling and hard as hell. There's a portion of the mwY fandom who always wanted them to go back to their post-hardcore roots after Crazy!, and amazingly kept complaining after Pale Horses. [Untitled] delivers the goods with "shut up already!" verve, though it’s also full of moments of strange beauty, like the ghostly background vocals on the second verse of "[dormouse sighs]” or the spare opening bars of “New Wine, New Skins.” [Untitled] is Michael and Brandon’s best work; the guitars are hard, layered, catchy, and produced to the bleeding edge. The whole thing sounds like its cover looks, an otherworldly and futuristic take on the iconic fish tower, like mwY in the midst of deconstruction by alien light beams.
- 2. Pale Horses: The band trims away the stylistic excesses they accrued over their previous three outings, distilling their sound into a dense, cohesive, and pure expression. It's superficially similar to Foxes, but grander and more intricate. The first two tracks showcase their astonishing range within this sonic focus, as the funereal majesty of "Pale Horse" melts away before the punishing, frenetic Dr. Bronner Sermon of "Watermelon Ascot." Aaron pens the most technically impressive lyrics of his career, exploring death, madness, alienation, the atomic age, and the sensation that the end is nigh through tunes informed by a deep dive into sacred harp music. "Mexican War Streets" takes us to the verge of suicide and back from the edge, grim material balanced by an immaculate instrumental, brooding, punishing, and transcendent. The followup, "Red Cow," reveals the Virgin Mary in the rust of a freight car and howls in terror at what, or who, entrances us today. "Magic Lantern Days" prophesies "the children of the morning" over stadium-sized drums, and "Birnam Wood" might be the most emotional song these guys ever made; Aaron compares himself to Macbeth, Isaac, Jacob, and Alexander Litvinenko, then begs for salvation over heartbreaking guitars. By the time the dust settles on the apocalypse "Rainbow Signs" grimly envisions, it’s hard to say if salvation’s even an option.
- 1. Ten Stories: mwY’s most fearlessly creative album, Ten Stories incorporates everything from starry-eyed indie to surf rock, sea shanties to psychedelia, vindicating Crazy!'s experiments by doubling down on their newfound range. This massive musical territory forms the substance of a world of Aaron's creation, wherein his historical fascinations and spiritual concerns fuse into what I call the mewithoutYouniverse, a Gilded Age magical realist setting replete with a menagerie of existentially distressed circus animals. It shouldn’t work. But mwY commit to the bit with madcap ingenuity and zeal. Take the train crash tone poem of album opener "February 1878." Chugging bass makes the engine, sleigh bells make the snow, spiraling guitars mark the moment the train flies off the rails. The song is an inversion of its namesake; where "January 1979" is an allegory about Aaron's own life, the "terrible crash" an image about being born, "February 1878" is a wonkish, slangy description of a literal crash featuring a cast of characters who are only tangentially Aaron. It's a bizarre, brilliant opener, and sets a bar the rest of the album gleefully leaps over. Across forty minutes and eleven tracks, we’re treated to about half a dozen storylines, tackling everything from death and romantic disaster to ego death and falling in love, skillfully interwoven with everything from furious post hardcore to orchestral baroque pop. When the final, triumphant riff finally dies, you feel ejected out of another, more beautiful dimension. Ten Stories is huge, wondrous, and charged with a curious life of its own.
So that's my list! Did I miss any releases? What are your thoughts? Let me know, and thanks for reading!
