Fievel Is Glauque conjure up visions of the busiest forest on the planet, dense with hopping rabbits, canoes gliding down the river, and elvish creatures serenading you from thickets and bushes. Or maybe it’s a visitors jam in heaven—a pastel tangle of woodwinds, guitar, drums, keys, synths, and vocals as tickly as wind speeding previous your ears. The duo’s newest, Rong Weicknes, is their prettiest, poppiest rush-hour prog-jazz clusterfuck but.
Carried out by an octet, this album expands FIG’s model into full-blown hyper-colored odysseys. Their cultishly adored debut, God’s Trashmen Despatched to Proper the Mess, was recorded completely on mono cassette, lending it a charmingly stuffy, attic-dusty environment. The follow-up, Flaming Swords, was finished in a single evening, with many tracks zipping by in two minutes or much less. Rong Weicknes is the results of Zach Phillips, Ma Clément, and their bandmates taking extra time. Final summer season, they slipped away to a bucolic farm and studio within the Catskills for per week, the place the group deployed a way Phillips calls “stay in triplicate.” They laid three various stay takes after which, in meticulous post-production classes, subtracted bits to land on a remaining collage of the performances.
The concept they subtracted something is tough to consider, as a result of the completed product nonetheless typically seems like a number of jam classes superimposed, a buzzing hive of harmonized madness. The way in which it’s blended feels virtually like they’re attempting to forestall listeners from extricating and discerning the parts—is that keening texture a viola? Are these two completely different woodwind devices, or only one doubled in octave? There’s a black midi insanity to tunes like “Kayfabe,” which ramps as much as a doomsday climax of horns, drums, piano, Clément stretching out till she disappears within the flood. “Darkish Dancing” is an overgrown backyard of flute, percussion, and warbly sitar. Clément’s voice will get uneven, a breathless stream of grunted ad-libs. But the eclectic muddle is surprisingly danceable, like a disco ball whose each tiny mirror flashes a unique shade of neon.
What retains the album from getting exhausting is the melodic lightness. FIG deftly mix technical freakouts and avant intricacy with ethereal freshness. It’s a jazzy model of middle-of-the-road ’70s pop just like the Carpenters, with a flurry of time signature and tempo shifts and excessive rhythmic flexibility. Spotlight “As Above So Beneath” is cardiac arrest-inducing but irresistible, leavening the blitz of devices with a topline that feels such as you’re frolicking within the solar. Temporary freakouts just like the sax tornadoes on “It’s So Straightforward” are over virtually immediately. It’s a Flip-O-Rama between freeform moments when the jazz crew begins blowing wild and Disney-fairytale sweetness.
