A summation of Mew's position: Mew are seriously uncool; they are also too cool to be popular; they are somehow both at the same time. Blame prog-rock for giving them a raw deal. The Danish quartet certainly had the optics to earn the tag: witness their magnificent hair and garish album covers. They've also released only two LPs in the past nine years, and one was meant to be listened to as a continuous 54-minute suite and had a 23-word poem as its title. But unlike contemporaries Muse or the Mars Volta or Coheed and Cambria, Mew isn’t alerting sheeple to the mindcrimes of the Matrix, nor does their technical ability manifest in 64th-note runs in 11/8 time. They mostly write love songs. All of which made them one of the more unique, if not necessarily successful, rock bands on a major label in the past decade. Those days are done, but thankfully, you wouldn't know it from +-.

Despite technically being an indie rock band now, Mew brings back Michael Beinhorn as a producer, a guy who was last convinced to come out of hiding by Courtney Love. And that was five years ago. If you’re unfamiliar with Beinhorn’s work, he produced Superunknown, but also a lot of very, very expensive-sounding albums that would frequently sell for pennies in used CD stores throughout the '90s—we’re talking Ozzmosis, Mechanical Animals, the Verve Pipe album after the one with "The Freshman" on it.

As a result, +- is liable to be one of the more magnificent-sounding rock records you’ll hear all year: The first thing you hear is a harp, while Jonas Bjerre’s pristine vocals continue to be exempt from the inexorable march of time. There’s some serious technique at play and Beinhorn ensures you hear all of it in high definition—Bo Madsen engages in some nifty pull-off runs, Silas Utke Graae Jørgensen plays impossible-sounding fills on tom drums. There are numerous moments where Mew switch tempos and time signatures and others where it could pass as King Arthur on Ice in Space. The removal from any earthly concerns or obligations is echoed in the chorus from +-’s opener as Bjerre sings, "I’d rather be a satellite."

The blinding, gilded tone is charming rather than obnoxious because Mew never use their exquisite and excessive tastes to glorify themselves as rock overlords. Their songs continue to be sweet, almost twee at their core. "Satellites" is probably the most grandiose song ever written about "movie night" and Bjerre’s lyrics remain curious, obtuse and playful—"The Night Believer" and "Interview the Girls" spin elaborate conceits out of what sound like true stories at their core, and somehow work on both the mundane and fantastical levels.

A gushing romanticism unifies both the lyrics and the music itself, which takes Mew past black lights and dry ice and into the neons and pastels of '80s pop cinema. "Making Friends" is a startling foray into cocktail-hour jazz, replete with stiff, Quincy Jones-style riffs. Both Bjerre and Kimbra's vocals on "The Night Believer" have the eerie, almost inhuman perfection of a Eurovision competitor. The dazzling "My Complications" could be taken as Mew joining the War on Drugs, Lower Dens and Twin Shadow in paying homage to Rod Stewart’s "Young Turks", though they bring in Bloc Party's Russell Lissack to play Top Gun leads and create a more comprehensive time capsule.

The range allows +- to be Mew’s most consistently engaging record, even if it’s also the longest on both a cumulative and per-song basis. Unlike with No More Stories... and Glass Handed Kites, there’s no delineation between what they perceive as an interlude, exposition or proper song. You’re still guaranteed stretches where everything becomes a gorgeous mirage and Mew conveniently packages almost all of these lulls into the 11-minute "Rows". Still, in light of the theatrics and grand gestures that precede it, "Rows" feels like a necessary comedown before the closing prom theme "Cross the River on Your Own". It’s also perhaps the best proof of Mew’s aesthetic singularity: "Cross the River" accidentally and unmistakably evokes the chorus of N.W.A.’s "Automobile" and still could be used by Baz Luhrmann to soundtrack a slow dance in the Sistine Chapel. So despite maintaining just about every quality that got them plugged as prog, +- argues for the reframing of Mew as a dream-pop act.