RIP to the Greatest Band that Never Existed: mewithoutYou
In January 2022 I had two tickets to see mewithoutYou perform in Los Angeles for the last time. At The Belasco, downtown. Buying two tickets was ambitious, because I no longer have any friends in this city with that same particular, fading music taste of my Champaign childhood. Buying one ticket was ambitious too. The show itself was ambitious. It got canceled for the same reason so many other live events did then and for the preceding two years: an abundance of caution.
The band rescheduled for May. Same venue. Same ticket. I planned on going, and looked forward to the event occurring at a time when covid case rates wouldn’t be as high as they were during the initial omicron wave. But then, of course, a few days before the show, I tested positive. Out of an abundance of both caution and disappointment, I stayed home.
mewithoutYou explores faith in their lyrics, and I maintained faith that I would see the band before they broke up, at one show somewhere on their “Farewell Tour.” Something in me felt like I had to see them. That watching them perform one more time, at age 31, would provide closure to my formative teenage years, when they were one of the most important bands that didn’t exist.
I don’t listen to mewithoutYou as much anymore, but putting on (A--->B) Life or Brother, Sister always fills me with a comforting sense of nostalgia, and sounds enjoyably timeless, no matter how much it kills the mood at the dinner party where I’m DJing from my phone on a Bluetooth speaker. Once the band breaks up, I thought, that part of me will truly be dead. Covid took concerts away from us for two years and also, because of my age, a passion for music that had been an inextricable part of my identity for decades. If I can’t grieve the loss of one of my favorite bands ever in a room full of people who feel the same way, I won’t be able to move forward.
My unshakable belief that I would see one more mewithoutYou performance grew stronger when my friend Adam, who lives in Washington DC, invited me to come with him to their final show ever in their hometown: Philadelphia. Unlike the other bands in the alternative Christian music scene in which agnostic teenage me dabbled—along with paradoxical involvement in hedonistic punk and hip-hop scenes—mewithoutYou has never been dogmatic in their explorations of spirituality. They are not above questioning teachings others regard as sacrosanct. Given lead singer Aaron Weiss’ interfaith background, the band’s poetic sing-shouted lyrics consider the best aspects of multiple scriptures and ideologies. Weiss is honest in how theology plays a role in his life, which, like the band, “doesn’t exist.”
The emphasis on the band not existing, reflected in the opening lines of “Messes of Men” and repeated throughout the rest of Brother, Sister—which I still consider their most undisputed classic album—exemplifies the uncharacteristically psychedelic nature of the music for a band who found an audience of mostly hardcore (in both musical preferences and practice) Christianity. mewithoutYou is spiritual in the way ayahuasca ceremonies are: vague and ill-defined, and different for every individual, yet undeniably powerful and important for everyone. They sell tie-dye t-shirts. Lyrics like “If you ever come near, I will hold up high a mirror - Lord I will never show you anything as beautiful as you” hold meaning to listeners who don’t necessarily believe in the ruthless God described in the New Testament. Although they’re couched in Christian dogma, lyrics like these are another form of expressing how we’re all reflections of one consciousness, connected through some humanly inaccessible truth. Nothing exists even though we experience everything as reality. When they announced their imminent demise in an update on their website in October 2019, before the pandemic ruined their plans of a Brother, Sister tour and cut short their dates with Thrice, mewithoutYou wrote the following:
We should recognize, of course, the gesture to "break up the band" as limited in significance. mewithoutYou is an abstraction, unsubstantial, and so there is nothing real to break up, or alive to die. And something of the inverse is also true: that so much of whatever we are will not end with our "farewell." So we hope not to put too fine a point on our corporate disbanding.
As a fan, I understood that the band’s music both never existed and will live on forever. But, like so many others, I maintained the conviction that seeing mewithoutYou one more time would be a sacramental experience that would allow me to move forward. I bought a ticket to the Philadelphia show and then forgot about it for months. My own faith was tested when, a few weeks before the show, I saw how much flight prices cost. I sold my ticket to my friend Adam’s friend.
On the night of the final show, my wife and I had people over for dinner. We grilled kebabs outside, drank and talked. I DJed from my phone to the bluetooth speaker. I was glad to have a night planned with friends, which has become few and far between given my age and covid’s extended decimation of my social life. But I wanted more than anything to be in Philadelphia. Like my father in the Midwest livestreaming Catholic Mass from some distant East Coast church throughout the course of covid, I did my best to replicate a religious experience I was unable to attend. I forced friends who like shiny dance music that I despise to sit through a chronological lecture about mewithoutYou’s music. How they started out heavy, almost metal-ish, with lyrics that could have been about love interests if you didn’t know they were about God. How they progressed to softer music, and kinda-sorta indie rock, but how they never stopped screaming out dense poetic lyricism in English, French, and Arabic. How the rumors were, back when I saw them with my friend Adam at the very Christian Cornerstone Music Festival, that Aaron Weiss aspired to live like Jesus: wearing tattered smelly clothing for weeks, letting his hair grow out and eating food out of trash cans. The difference, we joked now, was that Jesus could do miracles. Could turn water into wine or discarded chicken nuggets into a Michelin-star meal. mewithoutYou’s music, of course I recognize now, was the miracle.
Adam sent me videos from the show that night, which I tried to watch not with envy but with appreciation and gratitude. Channeling Jesus, I did my best to be happy for him and the lucky others who were in attendance that night. On Twitter, I watched a fan’s recording of the band’s opening song: “Bullet to Binary.” The technically precise, hard-hitting drum fill that kicks off the track—which I tried and failed unsuccessfully to replicate during so many noisy pre-teen practice sessions—sent goosebumps down my body from across time and space. At my home in California, I watched a chorus of voices in Philadelphia scream the song’s opening lyrics together: “LET US DIE! LET US DIE!”
Breaking down his experience at the show via text the following day, Adam wrote: “Shouting that stuff out at the top of my lungs while pushing people around gave me a release I didn’t know I needed. Man - it was like therapy.” I’d had a similar experience a few weeks prior in the pit at a Soul Glo show. Moshing and screaming lyrics that resonated with me was an integral part of my adolescence, allowing for a cathartic release of anxiety long before I ever signed up to speak with a therapist (Which is why I want to tell you about our sponsor, BetterHelp.com. Just kidding we don’t have a sponsor but I do recommend both therapy and mosh pits). No matter how old we get, or how long the bruises of strangers’ elbows to the ribs linger nowadays, pushing our way back into that pit of chaos will always offer a unique form of necessary spiritual cleansing.
I sent the Twitter video to my brother. He responded: “Wow! Still a band!” Adam had told me that Weiss, from the stage, thanked the multiple generations of fans for supporting them over the years. Said that when they formed in 2001, there were people who now love their music that weren’t even born yet. I told my brother that the video was from their final show ever, and I was supposed to be there. We both agreed that opening with everyone shouting “Let us die!” in unison was the most poetic conclusion possible.
Another song I played for my probably-annoyed yet understanding dinner party guests was Norma Jean’s “Memphis Will Be Laid To Waste.” It’s a ridiculous metal song with indiscernible lyrics screamed in a deep growl. It never fails to make people laugh when I tell them that Norma Jean is a Christian band, and they’re screaming about God. Playing it in any era, at any age, never fails to transport me back to the days of flailing my arms and legs in a stinky sweaty pit, semi-praising the Lord through a sweet release of pent-up adolescent angst. I do not know whether I ever enjoyed the song at face value, or if I learned to love it through repeated listens because it is so aggressive, so absurd. Now, I don’t keep playing it simply out of nostalgia. I keep playing it because it is great. It is great because the growling screams and intense riffs build to the slowed pounding of drums, and an insane breakdown in which Aaron Weiss provides a guest verse of beautiful sing-screaming.
Adam told me that the show in Philadelphia ended with an encore of mewithoutYou covering the song, and the lead singer of Norma Jean coming out in a bowtie to perform the lyrics. I am sad that I couldn’t be there. I am jealous that my friend was there. But I am happy for him. And I am content knowing that, for the rest of my non-existent existence, I can put on that song—or any of the other favorites from mewithoutYou’s extensive catalog—and feel a different sort of alive.
Everything in life, including and especially our favorite artists, is fleeting. The emotional feeling certain songs provide is eternal. If that doesn’t prove that some sort of God exists, then nothing will, because nothing does.
RIP to the greatest band that never existed. I hopefully will never have to buy tickets to a reunion tour.