Prog rock, since its advent, has seemed perpetually on the brink of two extremes: legitimacy and extinction. Tracking its relative success or failure is a venture nearly as frustrating as developing a concrete definition. Should groups like Radiohead or Sigur Ros be included under its umbrella, or must a more narrow criteria, embracing only experimentalists like the Mars Volta, be referenced? For those critical souls tending toward the stringent end of the spectrum, the latest release from Danish sensation Mew, And the Glass Handed Kites, will come as a welcome resuscitation to music’s vaguest genre.

Following up on 2003’s Frengers, which won Danish Music Critic prizes for Best Album and Best Band and led to dates with REM, Mew have once again delivered a stargazing, dream-pop product with hooks destined to remain indelibly etched in their fans' conscious.

Mew begin their most melodic album to date with the cacophonous "Circuitry of the Wolf," a blend of colliding fuzz guitar and bash-first drumbeats which forms a perfect foil for "Chinaberry Tree," the lush follow-up sung with tender aplomb by lead vocalist Jonas Bjerre. The seamless transitions between these openers is no fluke; the nearly complete lack of breaks between songs has led some critics to view Kites as one long tune, and others to deem it a "concept album." Yet the vast differences in instrumentation, harmonic texture, and, of course, melody, render these assumptions off-base. On what other recent album can you find the orchestral swell and climaxing vocals of songs like the fantastic "Why are you Looking Grave?" alongside tense, sinister efforts like "Acopalypso" and keening, mournful ballads like album closer "Louise Louisa?"

Bjerre’s addicting, virtuosic high-octave vocal prowess isn’t the only distinguishing factor on Mew's fourth feature-length. There's also a surprising instrumental complexity, and its realization frequently comes by methods once considered hackneyed. Who knew, for example, that synthesizer/xylophone combinations could be employed and taken seriously after 1989? Or that piano could elegantly underlie a three-man harmony resembling barbershop vocals filtered through a helium balloon?

But it works, and it works well. It may be true that Mew owe their modest and growing popularity to an eschewal of modern reservation; no one can doubt their eagerness to explode in choral splendor. However, the group’s greatest trick is concocting an elegant sophistication to effectively fend off the lachrymose sweetness infecting other power-pop acts (ahem…Of Montreal). It’s a delicate balance, and it lends Kites a swooping grandeur. Though the prog rock debate sputters on, it will be a tall task to find a recent effort as beautifully crafted in melodic sensibility.