I break the indie scene cardinal rule in that I don't "get" Fugazi. Yes, I own quite a few of their albums (all bought used) and actually enjoy quite a number of tracks. Their best stuff sounds good until you realize that they sound like Sonic Youth b-sides. And then you start wonder what all of the fuss is about. Because I'll take Sonic Youth any day over Fugazi. I know people will disagree with me... but more often than once I'm absentmindedly listening to a song and I wonder what's playing. My first guess is Sonic Youth and I'm wrong. Or my first guess is Fugazi and the song is crap. So that may be why I've never quite understood how so much music can get compared to Fugazi these days. (If someone want's to enlighten me, I'm definitely open to hearing about it below.)

People have been calling mewithoutYou a Fugazi knock-off. Ok, I don't really see it but I'm sure they're more attune to the Fugazi difference than I am. The only thing I know is that mewithoutYou doesn't sound like Sonic Youth (though they, like every other rock band, owe them a magnificent debt) and their songs aren't crap.

Upon first listening to mewithoutYou you will come to the conclusion that I came to when I first heard "[A->B] Life," their first album. You will notice how emotional Aaron Weiss' delivery is and how poetic they make things and you will label them an "emo" band. It's not bad to have emotion in music and it's not bad to be artistic and the combination of the two does not equal emo. What separates "emo" from music with emotion is that emo is a trend and will die with the trend while music with emotion will rise above it and become separate. mewithoutYou has become something separate because, although this is only their second album, they have proved that they are not a trend but genuine.

You cannot listen to "Catch For Us The Foxes" quietly. Which was the mistake I first made which made the album a disappointment for me at first. We listened to it at work, and we can't play music loud at work of course. The album blended together and became one giant song in my mind. Then I got the album and listened to it at home with headphones while reading the lyrics. That's when the album opens up and reveals it's true nature.

The lyrics are, simply put, incredible. They blow away Fugazi. They blow away your trendy brother's favorite emo band. With lines like, "...on the shelf beside the bed where at night you lay turning like a door on it's hinges? (first on your left side, then on your right side, then your left side again.)" and "Why pluck one string- what good is just one note? Oh, one string sounds fine I guess... we were once 'one notes'" from the song "Torches Together." Perhaps my favorite lyrics are displayed in "The Soviet," where Weiss sings, "God is love and love is real" followed by "As the night-time shined like day it saw my sorry face, hair a mess but it liked me best that way (besides, how else could I confess? When I looked down as if to pray, well I was looking down her dress...)"