You may have heard me mention the mewithoutYou show in my last post or by reading one of my 341 Tweets from the venue, but in case you wanted more about that show, you’re in luck!
First off, let me say that Aaron Weiss’ live personality is as billed. He runs the gamut between spastic and serene, frenzied and stoic, and exuberant and somber. And apparently he inspires large adjectives. But that’s just further testament to the fact that he is as thought-provoking a frontman as there is in the muddled rock scene today.
The rest of the band did their jobs – they played their respective instruments skillfully and deferred to their engaging friend holding the mic. That’s not to say they were forgettable, though. Each member took his turn in the spotlight at least once, particularly drummer Richard Mazzotta on the final few songs of the set.
The crowd made it a much more enjoyable show. The band sounded a bit shaky on some of their new songs off “it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright” and the audience was hesitant to get too involved, but as soon as the first note of favorites like “Paper Hanger” sounded, the sweaty crowd was more than eager to shout along with the gravelly vocals and move around in the packed room. “January 1979” was a highlight as the audience got the most rowdy. But then again, uninvited stage dancers and crowd surfers tend to make any song more enjoyable from a bystander’s point of view.
Aaron breaking out the acoustic guitar and switching to a singing-not-yelling vocal tone made “In a Sweater Poorly Knit” a welcome change-up.
Also, whenever he strapped on the accordion there was fun to be had, whether it was by watching him sway back and forth holding a big old-fashioned instrument with a towel on his head or by listening to the way he fit the accordion’s unique pitch into the rest of the rich instrumental sounds.
Tuesday night made it clear that if every mewithoutYou album was streamed straight into the brain with an accompanying video of the band playing all the songs, there would be no doubt who the kings of experimental rock are. I’ll admit straight-up that I’ve never been a huge fan of the band. It’s always been more of a “Oh yeah, they write really deep songs. Cool.” thing than a “Man, I know every word to every song” thing. But I guess in experiencing the band’s collective persona live and seeing the guy in front of me with mwY lyrics tattooed on both his forearms, I started to realize that the hype about this band is legit.
We got there late (what else is new for me) so I only got to hear parts of two songs by The Dear Hunter, but from what I heard they’re pretty talented live musicians as I expected, and Casey Crescenzo’s voice was hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck-raising even in that abbreviated listen. That’s not an exaggeration for illustrative purposes, either – it happened.
While mewithoutYou was setting up we caught a few songs’ worth of Dear and the Headlights on the indoor stage. I’m familiar with their lead singer, Ian Metzger, from his days in the old Christcore band Justifide, but I haven’t followed him in Dear and the Headlights that much since he left Justifide almost a decade ago. I like their sound, it has kind of a dirtier indie rock vibe. Maybe I’ll try to catch their full set at Warped Tour in San Antonio in a couple weeks.
After the show, Doug and I spoke with Brandon from The Rocketboys and the guitarist from Hundred Year Storm. Both bands are featured in the new issue of HM – a review of HYS’s album and The Rocketboys in the Declaration of Independents section. They’re both really nice guys. You should check them out and read what we had to say about their bands in the new issue or as a digital copy.
I’ll give an update of all today’s happenings tomorrow, I think I’ve given you enough to chew on for tonight.
It ain’t that kind of party,
Corey Erb
“I stopped believing, you start to move / (She was like wine turned to water then turned back to wine) / I stopped my leaving and the better man bloomed / (And you can pour us out and we won’t mind)” – from “Paper Hanger” by mewithoutYou
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Corey @ HM Magazine 
There are very few things in this world that raise my temperature and get me heated inside, but the glorification of plain old garbage packaged as artistry or musicianship is baffling and disheartening. I’m not one to slam a band for their attempts (or failures as the case may be) at musical expression but when it comes to mewithoutYou, I beg please do it with out me! It hurts my ears and scars my soul to hear one note of the icky noise bellowed from the this band. Furthermore, I look down upon all those who lift up and edify this less than average band.
But maybe I’m wrong, maybe there is another band called mewithoutYou that made my funnel cake revisit the back of my mouth at Cornerstone and maybe there is another band who sent me a CD called “It’s all crazy! It’s all false! It’s all a dream! It’s alright” that made all of us at the office think something was wrong with the CD player. Perhaps it is more plausible that a crappy band once again slipped under the radar of the Christian music scene, thus giving the outside world one more testimony to the fact that if you put a Christian label of a pile of dung, some people will buy it.
I respect your opinion, though I’m not sure mewithoutYou is the band that’s making the outside world lose respect for the Christian labels. If so, though, what’s the solution? In what sense is their music “garbage” and how can they better screen for it?
I’ve never been a big fan of their studio material either. Live, however, they present their music with a passion that extends into the audience (or at least that night, though I hear it’s a regular occurrence). I wouldn’t probably stop and listen at C-stone either – the spoken-word vibe isn’t really my thing – but an electric crowd can make a difference. I’ve seen great shows that were made mediocre by a paltry audience response.
So I guess if they’re not your thing that’s cool. What is it about them that you dislike?