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The Fiery Furnaces Bitter Tea Released in 2006 6.9/10 Styles Pop Experimental pop/rock Electronica Song Highlights Waiting to Know You Nevers Benton Harbor Blues |
Bitter Tea was originally intended to serve as a companion piece to last year's excellent (but critically bombed) Rehearsing My Choir. It's highly apparent that the two albums were recorded side-by-side, as many of Rehearsing My Choir's idiosyncrasies have found their way into Bitter Tea's overall structure. That being said, Bitter Tea is quite vastly different an album to The Fiery Furnaces' 2005 epic. To start with the most obvious difference, the duo's grandmother Olga Sarantos does not make an appearance anywhere on the album, bringing the spotlight entirely back to the Friedberger siblings. The album is also a significantly more song-focused effort - apart from the use of backwards vocals and instrumentation on every track, there is little here to tie the album together in concept. Some of the more notable instrumentation of Rehearsing My Choir - the noisy synths, the completely abrupt shifts in style mid-song, the jaunty upright piano - are quite prevalent on Bitter Tea, which actually brings one of the album's key weaknesses to the fore. The instrumentation on Rehearsing My Choir was no walk in the park, and it was only the album's central focus - Olga Sarantos and her ongoing life-story - that allowed the awkward musical backing to not detract from the overall feel of the album. The story gave Rehearsing My Choir flow, and the instrumentation only served to vividly complement the story. On Bitter Tea, or at least in a number of its tracks, this awkward instrumentation has become the album's focal point, and the album comes off significantly less accessible for it. A good example is the track "Whistle Rhapsody?", which appears late in the sequence. The track consists of two sections, the first a slow, creeping display of piano accompanied by Matt Friedberger's subdued vocals, the second a rambunctious finale of thumpy piano and guitar distortion. Both parts of this song sound utterly brilliant, yet the transition between them - a ten-second, high pitched "bomb dropping" noise, taken straight from the Rehearsing My Choir playbook, which is literally painful to listen to - is utterly appalling, and completely destroys any smooth flow in an otherwise wonderfully eccentric pop/rock gem. The album's track sequencing also leaves a lot to be desired, with the first three tracks being relatively uninspiring, and the majority of the album's standouts appearing during the second half. At fifteen tracks and over 70 minutes running time, it's hard not to feel as though Bitter Tea could've been a great album with just a little more selective editing, because there just isn't enough here to keep the listener genuinely interested from start to finish. Expect to be starting the album from track 4, or even 5 or 6, pretty frequently. The biggest disappointment, however, is that Bitter Tea is a long way from being an outright bad album. Easily two-thirds of the tracks are well above average, and the best moments, such as the 80s electro-prom-dance of "Waiting to Know You," the alternatively bouncy and abrasive synth and clever wordplay of "Nevers" and the beautiful "Benton Harbor Blues" (which is arguably one of the group's best ever combinations of accessible pop and fascinating instrumentation), are easily some of the best pieces of music the Fiery Furnaces have ever recorded. So, how can you sum up an album that's both frustratingly flawed and (in places) extremely enjoyable? I'm hoping that it can be chalked up to a learning experience and a difficult transitional phase for the group. You have to give The Fiery Furnaces credit for constantly pushing themselves to explore new musical territory, even if it doesn't always quite work out in each finished product. The strongest points on Bitter Tea are enough to warrant purchase, particularly for fans of the group, but if you were hoping for another Blueberry Boat, you're not going to find it here. |