MewithoutYou - Lyrical Themes

Lyrical Themes

The Weiss brothers are of Jewish descent and their songs use Jewish, Muslim and Christian imagery to explore spiritual themes. The Weiss brothers were raised in a Sufi Muslim household: their mother had converted from the Episcopal church, and their father from Judaism. Due to the Christian imagery in some of Aaron Weiss' lyrics, they have been categorized as a Christian band, although in interview, A. Weiss has stated he doesn't think they are a Christian band. Their lyrics reflect a personal relationship with God, and are not evangelistic. Other lyrical themes explored include suffering and self-doubt.

Many lyrics are taken from the Sufi poet Rumi including the song "The Cure for Pain" from Life and a line in the song "Seven Sisters" from Catch for Us the Foxes.

In the song "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt" from their album Life, Aaron Weiss' lyrics are based on a poem from the metaphysical poet John Donne called "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning". John Donne wrote the poem to his wife to explain that there is no need for dreading their physical separation or distance because their spiritual love will always keep them together. The lines of the song "thy firmness makes my circle just, and makes me end where I begun" are directly from John Donne's poem where the conceit is revealed as a compass (Stanza 9, ll. 35–36). The title of the song itself is a Kurt Vonnegut quote.

The title of their second album Catch for Us the Foxes is taken directly from Song of Songs 2:15: "Catch for us the foxes, / the little foxes / that ruin the vineyards, / our vineyards that are in bloom" (New International Version). This passage is also used in the song "The Soviet": "Good God, please! Catch for us the foxes in the vineyard—the little foxes". See lyrical themes of Catch for Us the Foxes for the themes explored on the album.

The title of their third album, Brother, Sister, is thought to be derived from St. Francis of Assisi's "Canticle of the Sun". However, in a 2007 interview Aaron Weiss said the title of the album came from a verse in the Bhagavad Gita.

Their fourth album, It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright explores many of the teachings of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. The sufi teacher's story of "The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie" from My Love You My Children: 101 Stories for Children is told as well as his story about the "King Beetle" from The Divine Luminous Wisdom that Dispels Darkness. Other concepts from the teacher are explored in "Allah, Allah, Allah," about seeing God in every blade of grass and in "Fig with a Bellyache" dealing with sexual temptation from The Divine Luminous Wisdom and The Golden Words of a Sufi Sheikh. Guitarist Mike Weiss has been quoted as saying that the themes of the album reflect a time in vocalist Aaron Weiss' life where he is "sort of revisiting and holding himself up to those teachings that there's no one religion that's going to be the only way to God ," reveals Weiss. "If you really want to just try to follow a path to God, I don't believe you need anything beyond, but it's just the idea that you're fixed on the only way and that everybody else is just completely misguided that is a sort of obtuse attitude that can hurt your own spirit."