mewithoutYou. June 12. Omaha

This might already be old news, but it’s news to me. I was just perusing the latest newsletter from One Percent Productions and saw that mewithoutYou will be playing in Omaha on Sunday, June 12.

IMHO, mewithoutYou is, without a doubt, one of the best things to come out of Tooth & Nail Records in ages. I loved their debut album, [A –> B] Life, and their newest album, Catch for Us the Foxes, has been in pretty heavy rotation here at Opus HQ.

I suppose lazy folks might lump the band in with that whole emo scene, but mewithoutYou’s music is something else entirely. It’s truly passionate, urgent, brutal, emotionally raw, and incredibly spiritual. Musically, I hear strains of early U2 circa Boy and October and the lyrics seem ripped from the pages of the Psalms, Lamentations, and even the Song of Solomon. In a genre where so many bands’ lyrics come off like cheap high school diary entries, mewithoutYou’s lyrics are truly urgent and confessional, revealing intense struggles with sin, lust, and despair.

I caught the band a few years ago at Cornerstone during one of those Tooth & Nail days, and it was absolutely insane. Dressed to the nines in black suits like a group of Russian authors, with flowers strewn about the stage, they were literally playing themselves to death. The singer seemed intent on tearing himself apart and practically verged on self-destruction. Immediately upon finishing their set, the drummer collapsed offstage from heat exhaustion and had to receive some emergency aid.

A lot of bands talk about intensity and emotion, but mewithoutYou is one that certainly delivers those things. And I’m excited to see them again.