Header image credit: Charlie Wagers
Genre(s): Post-hardcore, art rock
Label: Run for Cover
Released: June 15, 2015
It’s worth admitting, before you get too far into this, that I wasn’t even a fan of mewithoutYou when they announced their sixth LP, Pale Horses. I was just a 21-year-old simp for Run for Cover Records at the time. Bands like Basement, Hostage Calm, and Title Fight soundtracked my late high school and college years. One of my favorite live music memories remains volunteering for the label during their 2013 Warped Tour run with Citizen.
So, I had only heard about the band’s legendary status through forums and social media. And without any hands-on context, their signing with Run for Cover felt like this label I’d loved for so long was leveling up before my eyes. I couldn’t keep myself from pre-ordering the vinyl after listening to the lead single, “Red Cow”, just once. And yet, it wouldn’t be until I moved to North Carolina — nearly 3 years later — that I finally found myself absorbed by its impeccable grooves and apocalyptic lyrical themes.
Much of what makes mewithoutYou a phenomenal band is how two dynamic forces — Aaron Weiss’s vocals and the instrumentals alongside them — clash, harmonize, and unfurl together. It was difficult for me to get into the record without being fully onboard with the former. Aaron does more than scream and sing, occasionally through heavy effects; he crafts complex poetry for each song, which adds up to an unorthodox album narrative.
Specifically, Pale Horses finds Aaron at his most vulnerable and questioning. It opens like if Explosions in the Sky wrote a hymnal, with an apology for his “sideshow words” as the confidence of sharing his spirituality through music has weakened. This uncertainty permeates across the entire record as he approaches the apocalypse from both personal and cosmic angles.
The title track also introduces the titular “Pale Horse” of Revelation; Death itself, a specter, seemingly haunts Aaron throughout the album. “Blue Hen” presents Death as a literal character dismantling childhood memories and taunting Aaron about the futility of nostalgia. In “Magic Lantern Days”, it presents an imagined future where humanity worships nuclear weapons, much like the Magi following their star.
Under Death’s gaze, a central tension emerges between faith and doubt, belief and skepticism. Rather than siding with extremes, Aaron opts to weather the storm in between. This isn’t the confident spiritual seeker of earlier mewithoutYou records; this is someone grappling with inherited beliefs while facing life’s fundamental questions. (A theme which would continue on their final LP, [Untitled].)
Aaron’s then-recent marriage becomes both a personal confession and spiritual allegory throughout the record. “D-Minor” draws from his awkward first sexual encounter and subsequent doubts about compatibility reflect more profound anxieties about commitment, both romantic and spiritual. A honeymoon train ride through Nebraska in “Red Cow” becomes a journey through existential uncertainty, where even a rust stain resembling the Virgin Mary raises questions about the distinction between subjective reality and genuine revelation.
The marriage imagery serves as autobiography, as a metaphor for Aaron’s relationship with faith, and as commentary on how we project meaning onto mundane experiences. When he asks whether shooting stars are Relevation’s unripe figs or apparitions, he’s questioning the entire framework through which he’s understood both love and faith.
The most powerful moment comes in “Rainbow Signs,” where personal grief over his father’s Death merges with fears of global annihilation. Lyrically, the song moves from marriage anxiety to nuclear dread to a dream of reconciliation where Aaron becomes his father, finally finding peace. The album’s emotional arc comes full circle, not through answers, but through the acceptance of love despite uncertainty.
This thematic complexity transforms what could have been a simple crisis-of-faith record into something more nuanced. It’s a meditation on how we find meaning while acknowledging that our very frameworks for understanding might be entirely constructed. On the exceptional “Mexican War Streets”, Aaron puts it bluntly: “How long before our tails are caught by our ‘free’ thought?” Ten years later, that feels remarkably prescient.
When this record clicks with you, it’s like seeing dark clouds part and unveiling a beautiful rainbow. But focusing solely on Aaron’s lyrics misses half the equation that made Pale Horses so compelling. Musically, the album represented a crucial pivot point for mewithoutYou. It proved to be accessible enough to welcome newcomers like myself without diluting the complexity that longtime fans expected.
Working with producer Will Yip (who’d also later produce their final album [Untitled]), the band achieved their clearest, most balanced sound to date. Where previous albums often felt like Aaron’s voice battling against the instruments, Pale Horses presented a true conversation between all elements. “Red Cow” exemplifies their evolution perfectly, opening with pounding drums and a hypnotic guitar line that creates space for Aaron’s Neutral Milk Hotel-esque storytelling. It’s the sound of a mature band that has learned restraint, knowing when to explode and when to pull back.
The drumming throughout Pale Horses deserves particular praise as Rickie Mazzotta provides both the album’s backbone and its most dynamic moments. Just listen to how the percussion builds tension in “Mexican War Streets” or provides rhythmic complexity throughout “Watermelon Ascot” without overwhelming Aaron’s vocal delivery. He brings pure technical proficiency in service of each song that is/was one of the best in the emo/post-hardcore genre.
Meanwhile, the guitar work from Brandon Beaver, Greg Jehanian, and Mike Weiss shows a side of the band that’s comfortable with space and dynamics. Rather than the wall-of-sound approach of their earlier records, tracks like “Lilac Queen” and “Magic Lantern Days” use restraint and atmosphere to create emotional weight. When the band unleashes its heavier side, as in “Red Cow” and “Blue Hen”, it feels cathartic and satisfying.
Of course, if you’re a fan of mewithoutYou, you know that it’s in the live setting where their music feels the most potent. I finally caught the band on tour with Thrice in 2020, miraculously right before COVID. The audience went nuts during “Red Cow”, turning Aaron’s personal crisis into a uniquely powerful experience in community. While it came towards the end of their career, I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to see how they turned their songs into a space for communal release.
Pale Horses arrived at a unique moment in both mewithoutYou’s career and the broader post-hardcore scene. By 2015, they were experienced veterans in their own right. Signing with Run for Cover positioned them within a new generation of artists who valued their intensity and matured sound.
Perhaps most importantly, this record established the template for mewithoutYou‘s final phase. The themes Aaron explored — doubt, mortality, the search for meaning in an uncertain world — would continue through their farewell album, [Untitled]. In hindsight, Pale Horses feels like the beginning of the band’s final statement, a meditation on endings that would culminate in their actual (albeit COVID-delayed) conclusion.
10 years on, Pale Horses remains a consistent look at one of my all-time favorite bands at their best. They blended the cathartic energy of LPs like Catch For Us the Foxes and Brother, Sister with the nuanced songwriting growth from It’s All Crazy! and Ten Stories. That’s why it stands out in my (nearly complete) vinyl collection of their discography. They’re a band that’s still there to explore and revere. All you have to do is jump in, and this record is a hell of a place to start.
Keep reading about this amazing band & album here!
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