Review Summary: The summer is too sticky to slip through your fingers: drink it in like nectar, soak it in like a sweet melody.
What lies ahead in your life? Are you happy with your lot? Content & incurious? Or are you suffocating? Gasping for air like an aeronaut adrift far too high in the stratosphere of circumstances we all collectively refer to as growing UP?
This friction of youth, and the impulses they drive, are the subject of The Firey Furnaces joyously idiosyncratic third album: ironically titled “EP.” In it, the intelligent indie pop outfit poses a pair of poetic queries: Is the grass truly greener on the other side of the fence? If so: are we obligated to chase it?
EP courses with the vital energies of an anxious and indifferent youth. Again & again, these questions arise, in the form of lived-in vignettes, all urging the listener to move forward into the wild unknown. Awash with sunny guitar chords and quirky keyboards, they move in tandem like a fractured waltz:
“Let’s meet in Kristiana next summer,”
“Let’s get out before we melt away”
Within the crushing, initial three track suite, The Firey Furnaces handily demonstrate their talent at capturing tight, bright, twee-sounding hooks – and then adorning them with jagged, almost abrasive, off kilter instrumentation. The resulting contrast provides a framework for the anxieties of adulthood and delights of youth to duke it out: tossing harpsichord haymakers lyrical left hooks with a manic aplomb:
“I’ve been waiting since I don’t know when and it finally seems about to start,”
“I swear, I swear, that I will do my part”
The themes of this album are just as scattershot as its composition – which is why they must be considered in tandem. The unwieldy, jagged nature of EP delivers on its promise of youthful, anxious catharsis in ways in which more typical indie pop cannot. The tense, squealing guitars that glide above cheerful, poppy keys may not be appealing to every listener, but they are undeniably attention grabbing. It is abrupt. It is sweet. It is sour. And it is, above all: strange.
If EP has any centerpiece, its Tropical Ice-Land; which saunters into your ears with a gooey, hypnotic beat, propelled by satiating off-key hooks and left turns. It, like the rest of EP, is jarringly sharp but shockingly sweet, like getting punched in the face by a jar of honey-habanero marmalade. The song is yet another longing for escape.
Amidst the near-chaotic pop experimentation lie a number of raw moments that are all the more gorgeous for their contrast against the abrasive noise that surrounds them: the one-strum electric transition between “Single Again” and “Here Comes The Summer” that carries you off a cliff like a gust of wind, and the melodiously meditative acoustic outro of “Evergreen” are standouts.
However, these moments become scarce in the second half of the record. Despite EP’s distinctive sound and persistent experimentation (or perhaps because of it) its quality diminishes the deeper you reach into its runtime. This is because the Firey Furnaces are at their best when they focus their energies on tight harmonies and more accessible hooks: even if this isn’t playing into their more experimental strengths. The cost of indulging in experimentation in pop is difficult to avoid. It’s predecessors, like Apples In Stereo, sidestepped this by simplifying their song structures. And those that followed, like Panda Bear, threw accessibility out the window and turned to a more aggressive use of electronics.
Still, The Firey Furnaces paved an important path in indie pop with this 2005 release. It would go on to serve as clear inspiration for acts like Animal Collective, MGMT, and Of Montreal – who were all finding their footing at the time. Even if it fails to reach the ingenious psych-pop zenith of The Olivia Tremor Control’s late 90’s output (who does, really?) – it is difficult to describe this album as anything other than a success. And like any successful album, it forces a question upon the listener:
“What will you do next?”
