Album Review: The Fiery Furnaces: Widow City

The A.V. Club, Oct. 9, 2007 Link

Widow City is as much a trip to a musical rummage sale as any previous Fiery Furnaces album, and siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger wrap their finds together with growing efficiency. In fact, the hints of clumsiness and chaos save the Friedbergers from getting too cocky. The bouncy "Ex-Guru" gives way to a lurching mutant orchestra for about 30 seconds, and then much of the mystery is gone again. As on previous records, The Fiery Furnaces earn repeated listens on hooks and convoluted storytelling alone, though 2003's Gallowsbird's Bark and Bitter Tea hold more surprises. They group still creates songs that constantly attack themselves with new sections and rhythms—"Cabaret Of The Seven Devils" finds an especially strong balance between "irritating" and "loveable"—but something's easing the transitions here. Maybe it's Eleanor's vocals, which relish love, bitterness, and fear alike with the flip tone of a big kid telling the younger kids a ghost story.

A.V. Club Rating: B

Album Review: Ted Leo And The Pharmacists: Living With The Living

The A.V. Club, March 20, 2007 Link

Nobody will ever be caught just picking a Ted Leo song at an open-mic. Leo's songs can't exist without his unflagging, youthful conviction, and unlike many equally good songwriters, Leo can produce that reliably. In other words, it'd be hard for him to put out an unexciting album right now, so excitement alone wouldn't cut it. After a short sound collage, Living With The Living announces itself as another fiercely satisfying Leo record with "The Sons Of Cain," but as on his previous albums, Leo is at his best when he holds off on gratification. Living takes up plenty of room for that, running at a full hour—the longest Leo/Pharmacists album yet, and 20 minutes longer than his last, 2004's Shake The Sheets.

When Leo wants to moralize, he's admirably direct, but he also chooses the most vulnerable moment possible: "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb," more violent than anything on Sheets, comes right after the wistful lull of "A Bottle Of Buckie." Leo's become something of a leader at a time when dissent has become its own form of instant gratification. "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb" turns it back into a challenge—Leo isn't just shunning the bomber pilot who doesn't see or care about his victims, he's trying to level with him, while showing listeners images that they haven't seen either.

Leo and producer Brendan Canty have brightened and polished the scruffy punk that worked so well on Sheets, easing shifts like the one between "Bomb" and the more plaintive "La Costa Brava." They also don't hide the ever-increasing tightness Leo, bassist Dave Lerner, and drummer Chris Wilson have forged on Sheets and Hearts Of Oak and at countless shows. With interruptions like the short "Annunciation Day/Born On Christmas Day" and the reggae bum-out "The Unwanted Things," the album doesn't seem to flow comfortably, probably because Leo isn't interested in comfort. Sure, he still offers sympathy in dark times, but he knows that's nothing without restlessness.

A.V. Club Rating: A

Album Review: Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

The A.V. Club, Jan. 23 2006 Link

It's not like Kevin Barnes has never written sad songs with coherent lyrics—he lurched in and out of good moods between his acid-fueled romps through the thesaurus on Of Montreal's last two albums, The Sunlandic Twins and Satanic Panic In The Attic—but it's a little surprising to hear nearly an entire album of them. "Suffer For Fashion," the first track on Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, throws up a swirl of lo-fi synths and power chords, and for a few minutes, it seems it might continue the Satanic/Sunlandic party. It's clear that isn't the case by the end of the third track, "Cato As A Pun," when Barnes tells a friend, "I guess you just want to shave your head, have a drink, and be left alone," locking in the frustration and resignation that grips most of the rest of this album.

Still, it's all darkly beautiful, because Barnes continues to emote more through the music than through his words; "Cato" follows that stark message with close to 60 seconds of icy keyboards, as if to ease people into accepting that they're getting a newly unadulterated, prolonged taste of his personal life. The real test comes on "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal," which includes nearly 10 minutes of Barnes' plainspoken tales of failed relationships and self-loathing. As the track drags on, Barnes' directness cuts through much of the mystery and sheer weirdness that made his previous records so enjoyable, exchanging it for a single, rambling catharsis.

Barnes stops short of forcing people to feel his pain for 50 minutes: The bedroom-Funkadelic layers of vocals on "Faberge Falls For Shuggie" and "Labyrinthian Pomp" make it mercifully impossible to tell what he's talking about for most of eight minutes. The uneasiness lingers even on those tracks, but—in case his mastery of lo-fi delight made anyone forget—Barnes' melodic imagination doesn't stop at euphoria.

A.V. Club Rating: B