In The Aeroplane Over The Sea; The Moon and Antarctica; hell, even Pet Sounds - please take note: mewithoutYou has officially joined your makers' ranks.
Six months in, It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright. has trumped every single competing bid for the best album of 2009, and I would bet the farm that the next six months' releases don't stand a chance to top it.It's not even close.
During the months leading up to the album's release, mewithoutYou promised that the sound would be quite different from the post-hardcore of earlier records; just how far removed that sound ended up being came as a shock to many. And I'm not going to lie - fans expecting Brother, Sister II are in for a real letdown. But those who enter with an open mind should find the progression to be a welcome change.
I've read several reviews that draw a comparison to Neutral Milk Hotel, and in certain ways, this is true. It's All Crazy! It's All False! does incorporate a very eclectic instrumentation, bearing a general resemblance to the style of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Indeed, the horn arrangements on "Allah, Allah, Allah" seem like a reincarnation of "Communist Daughter", and "The Fox, the Crow & the Cookie" would fit right in next to "Holland 1945". However, I don't think anybody's going to be confusing Aaron Weiss with Jeff Mangum any time soon, as the band makes the album very much their own.
In case it was not clear by now, It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright. is a folk record more than anything else, bursting at every seam with Sufi parables, Christian imagery, and deceptively simple choruses drawing straight from the campfire songs of yore. Many listeners will never get past this first, superficial sonic layer, which is a real shame. Because accompanying this quirky, folksy band is the sublime poetic talent of Aaron Weiss. Always one of the band's fortes, his lyrics here are several notches above those of his contemporaries, packing a depth and poignancy not achieved since Dylan's heyday.
The most striking characteristic is the pervasive food and animal imagery present throughout the album's eleven songs. The titles themselves serve as an immediate clue: "Fig With a Bellyache", "King Beetle on a Coconut Estate", etc. What is more important, however, is the efficiency with which Weiss deploys these images and symbols, stuffing single lines with enough meaning to base a dissertation on. A perfect example of this is found in the opening stanza of "Fig With A Bellyache":
The camel in the desert took a ship across the lake, While the fish in search of water found a fig with a bellyache.
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