Mew has been on a roll of really good albums with really (endearingly) bad covers since 2003's Frengers. While it's true that the Danish band has been taking more and more time between each release (And the Glass Handed Kites came only two years after Frengers, but No More Stories... was five years in the making and + - six), this is only because each time they've had to fine-tune their elaborate and detail-oriented approach to fusing prog- and post-rock, baroque pop, and electronica in a way that both tracks with the rest of their catalogue and stands out as something more than a mere retread of past ideas. So far, they've succeeded brilliantly. Although + - hews closer to its predecessor than previous releases have, it also brings enough innovation to the table to stand up on its own.

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed in + - in the first few months of my acquaintance with it. Initially, I felt like all of the best songs had been released as singles and though I largely enjoyed the sound of everything else, it also seemed a little too one-note and expected. For these reasons, I put the album away for a while and was pleasantly surprised when I revisited it later in the year to find that it was more interesting and complex than I remembered. While it's true that it lacks a lot of the unbridled experimentation found in Mew's past work, the album reveals an impressive maturity and precision in songwriting and production that is the culmination of nearly two decades' work.

The album's singles are definitely its most immediate tracks and provide a good representation of Mew's style for the uninitiated. "Satellites" is an expansive, sunny pop song that builds up layers of synths, guitars, drums, and Jonas Bjerre's eternally youthful vocals into a stadium-sized chorus then blasts off into robust prog-rock instrumentation through which Bjerre's ethereal harmonies effortlessly glide. Half as long but just as packed with musical twists and turns, "Witness" skips the build-up, arriving breathlessly and never once letting up; Bjerre shows off his vocal range even more impressively, delivering low, dark verses before leaping back into his transcendental upper range. While these tracks skillfully illustrate Mew's more maximal side, the emotional "Water Slides" is subtler. Abandoning his usually cryptic lyrics for directness, Bjerre's romantic desperation is palpable: "For such a long time, I didn't know if I'd find you/Say something/I'm lying on the bathroom floor."

While the rest of the album takes more time to sink in, it is equally rewarding. Turning the "big chorus" formula of the singles on its head, "Clinging to a Bad Dream" is hypnotic and spacey, teasing the listener with a dynamic pre-chorus before moving in the opposite direction toward a dreamlike collage of polyphonic melodies that's more shoegaze than pop. The penultimate track, "Rows," is an unexpected nod to Frengers' "Comforting Sounds," a ten-minute epic that evolves into a galactic instrumental jam, punctuated by swaths of piano and soaring falsetto. By the time it ends, you're sure that it can't possibly be outdone, but then along comes "Cross the River on Your Own" to prove you wrong. Instrumentally, it's one of the most sparse and straightforward tracks here, which makes its beauty all the more staggering. In the final moments, Bjerre sings, almost as an afterthought, "My life was okay/I was counting my steps," summarizing in a handful of words the regret that permeates the entire track. At nearly an hour long, + - can be an overwhelming listen, but it is also an album of endless discoveries - which is a good thing, considering, at their current rate, it might be several years before we hear from Mew again.