On the release of their fifth album, Katy Christianson meets Mew.

If Mew frontman Jonas Bjerre had to curate a fantasy festival, his three headliners would be  Pixies, Kate Bush, and Magical Mystery Tour-era Beatles. Upon hearing No More Stories…, his choices make perfect sense.

This is, in many ways, a perfectly formed pop record, but everywhere within it are the familiar nods to the strange, the challenging and the unusual. Mew’s intention with this record was to “make something simple, that hits you first time.”

“For me,” Jonas says “‘Beaches’ is real pop song, but then I play it to people and they say they can’t get their head around it. I’m thinking, well if you can’t get your head around that then I just can’t write pop songs.”

But for every bit of attention Mew’s latest effort has received for its content, there has been just as much interest in its lengthy title, more familiar on post-rock epics, and its unusual artwork.

The decision to use a whole lyric for the title of this album came about “maybe for lack of a better idea”. The band were “growing tired of this prog rock label that we got on the last album. The titles on And the Glass Handed Kites were quite long and a little bit silly, and people thought we were really serious about that. Then we just couldn’t think of anything that would really fit.”

Jonas was skeptical at first of his bandmate’s idea to use a whole lyric, but warmed to the idea, and adhering to the band’s commitment to their visuals as well as their music, thought the long title would ‘look really cool graphically’. He didn’t anticipate the attention, saying that he “didn’t think it would be a big deal, but some journalists get really pissed off.”

The multi-coloured fusion of butterfly and clown-like face that graces the cover of this record is the work of French design duo MMParis, who are also responsible for the art work for And the Glass Handed Kites which Jonas himself thinks is visually “a bit dark, and a bit disgusting looking. This time we wanted something really colourful. The title is really bleak, almost like giving up on stories altogether, and we wanted something uplifting as a contrast to that. This butterfly face was a shock to look at, but that’s what you want in a cover.” 

Shock us they may have, but Mew’s trajectory out of obscurity has been steady in recent years, perhaps helped by an impressive touring schedule. Jonas’s favourite touring partners to date have been R.E.M., Bloc Party, and of course Nine Inch Nails (apparently Trent is “really nice”). But the most exciting show is yet to come; opening for the Pixies in Washington in December. “If I could travel back in time and tell the 14-year old Jonas that he was going to be supporting the Pixies,” he says with a chuckle, “I probably would have fainted.”