Credit: The Ely Brothers

Being an experimental rock act, mewithoutYou is no stranger to risk. When writing and recording its fourth album, 2009’s It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All A Dream! It’s Alright, the
band chose to ditch its signature heavy riffs for something that more
closely resembled Modest Mouse or Bright Eyes than the post-hardcore
bands that had originally informed its sound.

“We’re
getting older, and you do go through changes over the years,” guitarist
Michael Weiss said. “We’re more inspired by softer music and things
that rely on more instrumentation and less electric guitar turned up to
11. I think you need to allow yourself to grow and have a hope that you
can do more with music than just one thing. We’ve had that shift
happen.”

The disc caught fans off guard, but they can rest easy, knowing that mewithoutYou’s brand-new disc, Ten Stories, harkens
back to those earlier days, even titling the lead track “February 1878”
as a nod to the group’s breakout single, “January 1979,” from 2004’s Catch for Us the Foxes. Although that softer indie approach lingers, Ten Stories has found a good middle ground between the band’s new and old selves.

“I
think part of the growth was in realizing what our strengths were and
feeling good about those strengths, using them to our advantage, rather
than continuously trying to reinvent the wheel,” Weiss said. “The last
album we did was a bit of an experiment. I think we learned and grew
from that, knowing that we could hang onto those concepts while not
being afraid to hang with our roots a little bit. We can feel
comfortable in the skin we’ve grown for ourselves.”

The
record shies away from the spiritual, lyrical themes that marked all
prior releases, building from a narrative of a traveling circus that
suffered a train crash in 19th-century Montana. The crew is as proud of
this record as it has been in a long time and cannot wait to share it
with fans Thursday night at the ACM@UCO Performance Lab.

“I
have a good feeling about the album as a whole. It feels like we made a
record that represents the culmination of all the years we’ve spent
together as a band. It doesn’t feel forced,” Weiss said. “It’s like
having a new outfit, and I can’t wait to wear it out in public.”

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