[A→B] Life
- "Gentlemen" is angsty, yet surprisingly melancholic, featuring a memorably intense chorus that only gets more pained the second time around.
- "Silencer" has four verses of interspersed shouting and whispering spaced with a screaming, droning guitar that gradually leads to a powerful, shouted climax.
- The acoustic version of "I Never Said That I Was Brave" hidden in the final track is quite gentle and beautiful, especially in contrast to all the chaos and noise that precedes it.
Catch for Us the Foxes
- "Torches Together" is a rousing, inspirational call to unity and spiritual transformation that serves as an excellent Album Intro Track.
- "January 1979" became mewithoutYou's first Signature Song for good reason. While the verses are desperate and frenzied, the chorus and outro have a tranquil, worshipful element to them that gives the track a unique feeling.
- "Paper-Hanger" features vocals that come the closest to singing out of any song on the album, and it's all the better for it given how musically smooth and awe-inspiring its choruses are.
- "Carousels" is a slow, wandering piece that captures the singer's lost state of mind perfectly, and that nonetheless builds to a powerful chorus.
Brother, Sister
- "Messes of Men" begins with quiet vocals that are almost covered up by the sound of rainfall before it explodes into a powerful, almost religious chant that both expresses existential angst and spiritual reverence in equal measure. It may be the first time you hear a Big "OMG!" used in a worshipful sense rather than an expletive one.
- "C-Minor" is equal parts hopeful and melancholic; the main chorus is calm and spiritual, but the song ends with a sudden series of pained declarations backed by a sorrowful refrain.
- The final verse of "O, Porcupine", like much of the music on the album, is both frenzied and chaotic while also having a certain feeling of spiritual clarity and breathless beauty.
- "In a Sweater Poorly Knit" is a gentle, lullaby-like tune that nonetheless builds to a celebratory, ethereal finale featuring harp instrumentation that eventually stands for itself as all the rest slowly fades into silence.
It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright
- "Every Thought a Thought of You" is a groovy, laid-back departure from mewithoutYou's traditional style that makes use of novel instrumentation while containing several memorable guitar chords that recur throughout the piece. The Arabic outro verse is just the cherry on top.
- "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" is bouncy, fun, exuberant, and altogether full of storybook cheer. It features Aaron genuinely singing rather than just speaking or shouting and despite it being unusual, he absolutely knocks it out of the park. The violin and tuba gives the track an orchestral, childlike feeling, and the song's rhyme scheme is bouncy and accompanies the rhythm perfectly. It's undoubtedly more Folk than anything mewithoutYou had done up to that point, and all the best for it.
- "A Stick, a Carrot, and a String" is a simple, melodic retelling of the birth of Christ that gradually draws in more instrumentation and energy as it goes along.
- "Cattail Down" is an adventurous yet wistful Wanderlust Song chronicling Aaron's various adventures traveling across the country, which, like the previous song, also progressively builds in intstrumentation and intensity, in particular featuring some wonderful horns. The climactic celebratory chorus with backing vocals is also worth mentioning.
- The first part of a "The King Beetle on a Coconut Estate" begins with soft vocals and only a harp and a violin serving as instrumentation, before it slowly gains the aid of a horns and a flute. At its midpoint, however, it positively explodes with energy, with the guitar and drums being introduced along with louder, but still sung vocals. It finishes with a beautifully resounant chant before the vocals once again fade back to a whisper. The entire song is a powerful story even without the lyrical meaning, sounding both melancholic and triumphant.
- "Allah, Allah, Allah" is overall a hearty, satisfying conclusion to the album, featuring repeated, chanted vocals along with some beautiful instrumentation with both the guitar and brass. Props to the writer for fitting the somewhat awkward title perfectly into the final verse.
Ten Stories
- "February 1878" harkens back to the band's Post-Hardcore roots with a blisteringly intense introductory sequence featuring shouted vocals and a droning guitar. The folk influences from the previous album also return as after it, the instruments quiet down, the vocals are sung, and the track takes on an air of melancholy rather than intensity.
- The opening and recurring chords of "Grist for the Malady Mill" feel meaty and substantial. The verses are sung softly, and while the chorus raises the volume, the song nonetheless carries a sorrowful tone. The bridge also transitions between spoken-word and sung vocals perfectly.
- The verses of "Elephant in the Dock" are quiet and restrained yet possess an undeniable sense of power. The choruses, by contrast, are frenzied and shouted. Special mention to the guitar, which perfectly captures a sense of sorrow and resignment.
- "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume" is chaotic and wild, with a furious guitar and vocals that are almost entirely shouted. The track builds to a climactic, resoundingly powerful chorus that manages to completely dissipate in only a few seconds. The song's outro is a soft, quiet melody that almost acts as a lullaby, further serving as a break in the intensity from not just the song, but the rest of the album up to that point. Hayley William's ethereal vocals showing up in the latter two sections are also worth mentioning for merging perfectly with Aaron's own rougher style.
- "Bear's Vision of St. Agnes" can only be described as beautifully tragic, featuring whispering, singing, shouting, and even sighing to paint an auditory picture of absolute sorrow.
- "Four Fires" from the EP Other Stories is predominantly restrained, but in the second half becomes considerably more upbeat - first to reflect emotional turmoil, and then to reflect a kind of wistful celebration. Props must also be given for the perfect integration of a sung hymn
into the spoken vocals.
Pale Horses
- "Watermelon Ascot" is a mellow, fast-paced rock piece with a pulse-pounding rhythymic drumbeat balanced with gentler, more ethereal choruses and a hymnlike outro segment.
- "Mexican War Streets" begins with a meandering, sung verse before the instrumentation pulls back and the vocals quiet. The instrumentation then comes back in at full force and the vocals shift to raw shouting, building to an intense lyrical climax matched by sparse but powerful guitar chords.
- "Dorothy" is quiet and minimalist, yet still manages to pack a devastating emotional punch. It's almost a sung story rather than a song.
- "Blue Hen" can only be described as hypnotically rhythmic, featuring sung verses and spoken interludes that builds to progressively rougher vocals with instrumentation absent save a drumbeat before once again slipping into a gentle lull.
- The first half of "Lilac Queen" is fairly minimalist, but after a Song Style Shift, transitions to a series of powerfully cascading, sung verses backed up by intense, rolling instrumentation, building to a droning Epic Riff.
- "Birnam Wood" has guitar-work that practically sings by itself at certain points, matched by sighed, almost breathless vocals, and choruses that almost sound pleading and desperate.
- The climactic verses of "Pale Horses" are thundering and apocalyptic, featuring screamed vocals and guitar. The final, outro verse, by contrast, is, much like the other denouements in the album, peaceful and light in sound.
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- "August 6th" grows in intensity and power as it rolls along, starting as a gentle whisper and growing to a thundering call. It somehow manages to feel tragic, ethereal, profound, and vast all at once. Special mention goes to the way Aaron's voice peaks with the line "With off-white deerskin wedding dress on".
- "Kristy w/ the Sparkling Teeth" is a simple, folksy, feel-good tune featuring only acoustic and electric guitar, acting as a nice denouement to the album on the whole.
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- "Julia (or, 'Holy to the LORD' on the Bells of Horses)" is epic, grandiose, and feels like something on a totally different scale compared to everything else in their discography. The guitarwork feels orchestral and huge, perfectly contrasted with the more reserved, reverent vocals.
- "Another Head for Hydra" is an energetic, fast-paced piece with a head-banging drumbeat. Vocally, it features mesmerizing, swaying verses and a ruthlessly aggressive spoken-word chorus that perfectly transitions from the former.
- "Winter Solstice" is a dreamy, transcendent work with a downright beautiful, almost dancing chorus that somehow manages to sound both celebratory and wistful at the same time, evoking both wonder and melancholy.
- "Tortoises All the Way Down" opens with almost-whispered lines before it transitions to simple, rhythmic verses leading to cascading choruses. The second then leads into a repetition of the song's almost-whispered opening lines, before that suddenly progresses to a final, shouted, frantic-yet-powerful chant.
- "New Wine, New Skins" begins soft and dreamlike before transitioning midway into a more powerful, directed rock ballad with heavy, yet somehow curious-sounding vocals.
