The Fiery Furnaces
Crystal Clear
(Rough
Trade)
The Fiery Furnaces can’t make their
mind up what they want to be – 60s Beatlesy psychedelia,
90s indie, or a musical – and it shows. They’re
obviously firm believers that they’re being really
experimental but it just sounds like everything’s
tacked together with musical blu tack. ‘Crystal Clear’ starts
off all psychedelic with stupidly mundane lyrics and I
really start to despair until this great riff kicks in
saving the song.
They also like to describe their music as a ‘twisted bluesy gem’ but
the first of the b-sides puts paid to any ideas of that. The song, entitled Cousin
Chris, sounds like a reject from a musical (Oliver! springs to mind) and as a
song in it’s own rights it just doesn’t work. The last track Smelling
Cigarettes is a cross between the Streets and Velvet Underground whilst managing
to be nowhere near as good as either trying to give it an urban feel to it, recorded
in one or two takes complete with background city noises. It doesn’t always
work and I really don’t recommend this single.
