Mew frontman Jonas Bjerre has worked on the projections for the bands live shows since their early days. Usually, the Danish trio finish an album and Bjerre gets to work on the visuals. For their seventh record, though, the singer decided to turn things upside down, working on the visuals first and seeing if they informed the music. The resultant record feels like a culmination for one of rocks most ambitious and inventive groups: Visuals is where Bjerre and his bandmates, bassist Johan Wohlert and drummer Silas Utke Graae Jrgensen, join the dots of a career that has spanned over two decades. We do everything on this album ourselves, says Bjerre. We produced it ourselves, I did the artwork, Im doing the visuals. Visuals felt like a fitting title. I like the idea that each song has a visual aspect to it somehow.

Mew have a tradition of, as Bjerre puts it, hiding away in a cave for three or four years between albums. The tour that accompanied 2015s +- album found the band reaching a creative peak that they felt was too exhilarating to be dampened by a period of extended cave-dwelling. They arrived home with demos that had been written on the road and the spark was lit. They wanted to break the cycle and make an album quickly. We just felt like, if we do it the normal way, its gonna be another three or four years before we get to do it again, says Bjerre. If you keep doing it like that, ultimately you make a handful of albums and then youre ready for retirement. The trio wanted to make an album spontaneously, keeping the energy theyd generated on the road going.

Bjerre doesnt know where Mew songs come from. He finds it hard to pin down his lyrics, his melodies, himself. Its what makes his band so special, that thrill that songs could go anywhere, that understated verses could suddenly rocket skyward, anthemic choruses could implode into beautiful soundscapes or sophisticated grooves could be crushed like a tincan. I dont consciously know why the songs come out the way they do, says Bjerre. Its a lot of trial and error for us. Even though a song is on an album, it keeps growing because we get to go out and perform it for an audience. I like the thought it can keep growing. Its never really finished.

Visuals is Mew at their most compact, their chemistry at its most potent. With only one song over five minutes, its their most concise album. Bjerre says there was no need for a grand, overarching concept. Each song on Visuals represents its own little chapter and story: nothing needed to be overly long. Each album is like a collection of thoughts and ideas that fit the time were in, he says. Theyre like little diary entries, except theyre a little bit more veiled perhaps. To me, albums are memories of times in my life.

The song that led the way was the slow-building euphoria of Nothingness And No Regrets. Bjerre says that Mew lyrics often have two or three different meanings, and the opener is a reflection on life and death at the same time as imagining this team of people trying to accomplish something and ultimately failing. The expansive 80s-style pop of The Wake Of Your Life is about legacy and whats left after youve gone. These are things you think about more and more the older you get. It started out as a synth-pop track with lots of programming before taking on a different shape when the band added guitars over the top. We try to change the method of how we reach the destination all the time cos if you do things the same way all the time, the results will often be very similar, says Bjerre.

The discordant stomp of Candy Pieces All Smeared Out came about after Bjerre went back over some demos hed made as a youngster on an Omega 500. Some of them were interesting sonically so I kept some of the programming. We built the song on top of this really weird 8-bit computer track. The song sums up the emotional to and fro and captivating contrariness at the heart of Visuals: its an album thats both nostalgic and contemporary, that looks back whilst marching forward.

The blissful glide of In A Better Place is a prime example of the impulsive environment that the songs were written in, a drumbeat by Jorgensen inspiring Bjerre to write a song immediately, whilst the atmospheric rock of Ay Ay Ay was based around a choir part that Bjerre had come up with a few years ago. All of the vocal parts were recorded in the booth that Bjerre had constructed in his apartment in Copenhagen. I like waking up in the middle of the night and feeling inspired by something and being able to go in my booth and just sing it, he says.

Bjerre says that the celebratory groove of Learn Our Crystals is one of our weirdest songs. Poppy and fantastical, it had a familiar feeling to the singer as soon as he wrote it. The soulful sway of Shoulders has an RnB feel to it, whilst Bjerre had earmarked the mesmerising intricacy Carry Me To Safety as the albums closer as soon as itd been written. I just like how it twists and turns, he says. Its a reflection on life and being in a band, what it means to be in a band, dedicating so many years of your life to this thing.

Twenty years into their career, Mew have the irrepressible ebullience of a band on their debut album. Visuals feels like the beginning of a new chapter. Mew is what I always come back to, its a companion to my life. Its always been there, as long as I can remember. Its a big part of the footprint that well leave behind, says Bjerre. Mew march on: this is the sound of a band seizing the moment.