(Neumos) On the spectrum of irritating band names, the World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die ranks somewhere between fun. and Aa. And the tunes, while heartfelt and played with a refreshing early Modest Mouse-ish sloppiness, fail to allay my annoyance. It slots in comfortably with the current critical re-evaluation of emo, that reviled music-biz buzzword which made a few angsty, tat-sleeved individuals quite a bit of money in the ’90s. I'm not wholly convinced we needed an emo revival; then again I'm far outside the demographic for this sort of thing. Headliners mewithoutYou are quite intriguing, however: their texturally dynamic soundscaping at times approaches the grandiosity of prog- or post-rock, and front man Aaron Weiss's lyrics, while a bit cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die serious, are at least literary in ambition and passionately delivered in execution.
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