Scandinavian music has undergone an upswing of epic proportions of late. Sweden began it all back in the mid-1990s, with Refused leading the pack and inspiring a plethora of American acts, but since then things have gone haywire, with a variety of different acts emerging.

Mew are the latest cabs of the rank, earning a swathe of Radiohead comparisons for their debut And the Glass Handed Kites. Really, the band are far more angular than Radiohead ever have been, with swathes of guitar noise cutting through on the likes of “Why Are You Looking Grave?”. Appropriately, J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. appears on said number, as well as offering backing vocals on “An Envoy to the Open Fields”.

“Apocalypso” has a manic energy, while “Special” shows the pop smarts of a band who most definitely have the ability to write an immediate winner, but the way it melds into “The Zookeeper’s Boy” shows that Mew are still entertained by the notion of doing it differently to everyone else, rather than being part of some notion of sound.

A dense listen, And the Glass Handed Kites is more than a little much to take in one listen – the array of heavy rhythms and giddy synths that dot it can most certainly overwhelm on initial approach. But that’s undoubtedly part of the album’s charm as well: it’s the sort of release that you keep returning to again and again because you discover something new each time.