Review Summary: Breakfast in Fur's debut LP plays as a spaced-out exploration of identity: a psychedelia for the home-bodied, providing in equal amounts points of access and moments of peripheral vibrancy.
After releasing an EP in 2011, it took four years and three new members for songwriters Dan Wolfe and Kaitlin Van Pelt to re-enter their (home) studio and record a debut full-length. If Breakfast in Fur's self-titled EP was a series of experimentations, a sampling of what this project might offer, then Flyaway Garden is a preliminary statement of vision and intent, moving the band from dabbling to declaration. The result ultimately plays as a spaced-out exploration of identity: a psychedelia for the home-bodied, providing in equal amounts points of access and moments of peripheral vibrancy.
Flyaway Garden is perfectly predictable, until it’s not. Much of the album consists of lush 3-minute-plus rock songs, warmly saturated and dripping with reverb; and yet the most sincere moments arise out of electronic minimalisms that demand attention through relative stillness. It's only fitting that the title track contrasts with, rather than exemplifies, the core sounds of the record, providing a short moment of flat, druggish lucidity among an array of songs both solidly grounded in pop fundamentals and adorned with frequent yet constrained instrumental tangents.
Wolf & Van Pelt's lyrics are persistently self-referential in the most harmless way imaginable. Listeners are confronted with a predicament already imbued in the cultural moment – that of the troubled 20-something urbanite. Not quite malcontent but far from satisfied, the nonspecific first-person laments identity crises and indecision in the face of materialism. One might even imagine that Flyaway Garden confronts matters of romantic insincerity in the time of overwhelming irony, but that interpretation requires some translation and extrapolation, as the songwriting duo typically errs on the side of ambiguity. Often, lyrics are relinquished altogether, but the choice to forgo verbal content actually serves the album well given the demonstrated gap in musical and lyrical finesse.
The beauty of this album shines through not necessarily in spite of the lyrics, but certainly not because of them. In fact, the nonverbal imagery and stylistic diversity come together to present something more universal and compelling. The album cover sets a smiling child against a dull strip of layered colors reflected in his glasses. It is in the blend of this image, the album title, the overarching composition, and the mix that we find a concept worth latching onto. Flyaway Garden ultimately juxtaposes the grounded with the fantastic, the factual with the remembered, the rhythmic with the atmospheric, in order to draw out a reflective, interrogative experience. Too abstract to be critical, the ebb and flow of the LP invites you to float and brush gently against the walls of the genre, plummeting into earthy bleakness only when it’s both unexpected and necessary.
Flyway Garden succeeds more often than not - as an album, a full-length debut, and a lane of communication from artist to audience. Moving past the novelty of new work, Breakfast in Fur has reached a level of engagement that enables more thoughtful relationships with fans and listeners.
