Mew release greatest hits album

Mew released a greatest hits album today. After just being introduced to them last year by a friend I had no idea they had a career spanning over 15 years. The compilation, titled Eggs Are Funny, is being released in the U.S. as a digital-only album by Columbia Records. There are no physical editions of this compilation released in the U.S. For collectors, the one to get would be the Danish limited edition that also features a Region 0 encoded DVD supposedly with all the music videos for the songs.

So, as you can figure by the Danish-only limited edition, the trio, which includes Jonas Bjerre, Bo Madsen, and Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen, originally hails from Denmark, though Bjerre sings in English. Although the music on the comp covers over a decade, their aesthetic is consistent throughout. They seem to meld a wistful poppiness that is a bit twee, not to different from Death Cab For Cutie, with odd song structures that take angular turns on odd beats, not too different from Genesis.

I had only been familiar with No More Stories, Are Told Today, I’m Sorry, They Washed Away, No More Stories, The World Is Grey, I’m Tired, Let’s Wash Away and fell in love almost immediately after hearing the odd backward vocals of the first track. As seen in the tracklisting below, Eggs Are Funny features several tracks of 2009’s album. But it also covers tracks from the band’s four prior studio releases.

The retrospective spans 14 tracks, including one unreleased song called “Do You Love It?” Click the title to hear the song.

Here is the tracklist supplied by the record label and the albums they have been culled from:

• Am I Wry? No* @
• Snow Brigade $
• Beach ^
• Introducing Palace Players ^
• Silas The Magic Car ^
• Wheels Over Me !
• Saliva @
• She Came Home For Christmas* !
• Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy ^
• Do You Love I?
• Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed $
• 156* @
• Special %
• The Zookeepers Boy %
• Comforting Sounds* @

Original album source:

• ! A Triumph for Man
• @ Half of the World is Watching Me
• $ Frengers (* tracks were also on Frengers, but released on an earlier album)
• % And the Glass Handed Kites
• ^ No More Stories, Are Told Today, I’m Sorry, They Washed Away, No More Stories, The World Is Grey, I’m Tired, Let’s Wash Away