CRYSTAL CLEAR

The only really notable new release today is The Fiery Furnaces' inappropriately titled EP. For the price of an EP, you get 10 previously hard-to-find songs, over 40 minutes of running time, and its still sequenced to run like a real album. I have not been able to get a hold of the entire thing yet, but so far the EP seems extremely promising, and may be better than anything the FFs have released yet. My favorite song by far (so far) is "Here Comes the Summer", for its huge buzzing synth pulse and more great guitar wah from Matt Freidberger.


Download "Single Again" off the EP from Insound.

In the past couple of weeks, after talking with my friend Steve, I've revisited Blueberry Boat quite a bit. I've also done a lot of reading about it, including Matt Friedberger's insane letter of intent of sorts regarding the album, and very slowly going through Clap Clap Blog's insane dissection of the album, song by song. I've decided that I need to spend a lot more time with it, but I definitely like it more and more each listen.

I've also been revisiting Gallowsbird's Bark, which I fell in love with this summer. Reading some reviews of that album, I remember why it took me so long to discover it. So many reviewers and so much press advertised it as this "rootsy" affair, steeped in old-timey blues and the like. Granted, the album gives off some of that vibe, but there's so much more to it than that, some of it really indescribable. The wah freak-outs, the odd structures, the drastic changes in instrumentation, all make up something much greater than the sum of its parts. Once the press died down and I could just hear the album is when it really grew to be one of my favorites.