It's interesting to note that you can always hand a CD or a ticket for a live show to the biggest music snob anywhere for a band that they've never seen, heard, or read about and still have them walk away from that experience completely blown away. While I’m certainly not the biggest snob around, I consider myslef highly educated with honors in that area. With that in mind, when I heard Mew was opening for Kasabian at the Bottleneck I thought, “Who would name their band Mew?” It sounds a lot more like a noise a sad little animal makes than a word, let alone a proper name for a band.

I went ahead and did my research, though.  It turns up they’re from Denmark, but now all five guys reside in London. They refer to their fans as "frengers"," explained as "not quite friends and not quite strangers." They have kept a concert blog since 2002, back when it used to be called a “concert diary.” And most importantly, these guys are HUGE in parts of Europe and Asia and their diehard fans over there would have killed to have been a part of a 300 person show at the intimate Bottleneck.

As I walked into the venue and checked out the stage, it was overwhelming. Madonna could have stumbled in that night and played a live show. There were more trinkets, gadgets, screens, projectors, soundboards, and alien-beam-receiving devices than I’d ever seen at the Lawrence venue. On top of that, this five piece band had an amazing support staff around them -- a main soundboard guy, a front-of-house soundboard guy, a photographer, an audio/visual guy and a guitar tech. (Yes, a guitar tech.  At the Bottleneck.) All of these guys were wired with In-ear monitors (IEMs), as were the guys in the band. This allowed everyone to communicate mellifluously in Danish to make sure everything was as it should be. Their entire 45-minute sey was intricately orchestrated to be a perfect event, which it was.

Right now, Mew is on tour in support of the US Sony release of And The Glass Handed Kites. I listened to the disc for the first time on the way to the show and was struck by its intensity. Their sound is sort of a Sigur-Ros-meets-Radiohead but with stinging sharp vocals by frontman Jonas Bjerre. On stage, almost every song begins similar to a typical rock number -- two guitars, bass, keys and drums. Then the vocal drops into the mix and beautifully twists itself around in the gadgetry.  The keys slowly morph and taken on the color of a symphonic string section or some other exotic concoction of sound as the guitars lift off into orbit and the video screen tells a story that may or may not have anything to do with the song.

Mew's lyrics tell chopped up little stories, kind of like a disjointed nursery rhyme. The videos featured animals like rabbits, cats and kangaroos playing multiple intruments as some sort of vehicle  carried them through a forest; thoughts of the animated Robin Hood Disney movie work here. At other times, the video looked like footage of the Big Bang: comets, shooting stars and other cosmic fare.

The highlight of the show came in a two-song shot of “Am I Wry, No?” flowing into “156,” tracks one and two from their 2004 album Frengers. Apparently the number 156 appears to have unknown connotations in the band’s history. On message boards, frengers still ponder over its meaning. These two songs formed a spacey orchestra of sound that spanned about 15 minutes. At the end of it you needed a drink and towel to wipe the sweat from your brow.

Mew's current single is “The Zookeeper’s Boy." Take a look at the video for a good idea of how the night went down and you'll quickly realize how hard it would be to tell your friends about this band, let alone capture it acurately in a review like this one.

After leaving the stage, the band headed outside with the crowd. They hung around and chatted with fans who had never seen them live before. Bo Madsen, Mew's lead guitarist, took his time chatting and signing newly purchased merch and posters ripped from the walls. I heard one fan, a guy by the name of Jeff Runnings who had driven from Lincoln for the show, say to Madsen, “You make Thom Yorke look like a retarded orphan.” Madsen responded with a twitchy “Thank you.”

Of course, there was more show to go;. Kasabian was up next. However, I was checked out, still soaring on the chorus to “Zookeeper” and trying to figure what happened during the “Wry/156” combo. Three songs into Kasabian’s set I left the Bottleneck, jumped in the car and headed back home listening to And the Glass Handed Kites for the second time.

-- Concert Chris (email)