4 out of 5

Label: Kickstart Audio, Pine Street Collection

Produced by: Arik Victor

There are two ways to review this, of course: as if it’s the only / first mewithoutYou recording you’re hearing, or as a fan of the band.* On both fronts – this is impressive stuff.

Their first official release post a self-released demo, I Never Said That I Was Brave absolutely owes much to the math and screamo that was doing the indie music tours at the time, as groups like Norma Jean and other eventual mwY labelmates of Tooth & Nail adjacent labels were boiling together the punk aspects of Converge and the like with the more streamlined metalcore that’d come in the wake of grunge, alongside emo influences that encouraged more expressive and literate lyrics. Though all of these songs would be rerecorded and rearranged and strengthened on their album debut, [A→B] Life, the pulsing emotions and compositional deftness of the band were already absolutely in place here: Aaron Weiss hadn’t quite tapped into his exact, shaky-voiced singing style – again, we’re owing much to yelly rockers at this point, and doing some dual-vocaled screamo stuff that can trigger some nostalgic cringe – and you’ll hear the typical hardcore guitar “squee” and breakdowns that are there just to be there, but at the same time, the way Weiss winds his way through lyrics that are both personal and illustrative, and the way the group isn’t always playing for the fences, letting their riffs and the songs breath, it just has an edge. You know the band has something, if in a raw state. By the time these things were cleaned up and sharpened (undeniably helped by [A→B] producer J. Robbins), there was no confusing the group with its peers or influences.

Stepping back to this as a mwY fan, the impression is much the same, if even bettered by knowing how this sound would evolve and mature. While I don’t own the original version of this, and there’re definitely some remnants of a likely poorer recording in some minimal noise before and after the tracks, the 2016 edition sounds really, really good: highs and lows land; it has range that I’d guess has really been cleaned up by the remaster. And it’s also rewarding that even when the band is committing some early 00s hardcore sins, it’s really not all that embarrassing: they could’ve continued on more in this format, with big guitars and yelly dudes, and still have had an edge with Weiss’ lyrics and the songwriting, meaning that these early takes are not just a collector’s necessity, but worthwhile listens on their own standing. (And for collectors who do own the original: the remaster plus a bonus acoustic track on the B-side should encourage the double-dip.)

*…Also as a fan that loved [A→B], and always kinda aw shucks missed the group being hardcore punkers.