The Fiery Furnaces
Bitter Tea

THE REVIEW

These two claim to be brothers, and I believe them. I believe them because they have no need to tell lies, and perhaps they wouldn't even need the "The" in the band's name, but they have it, and we'll have to accept it.
In return, they have so many other ideas in their heads, and they want to share them with us without going through the thriving indie-gossip market.

These two also make Pop, a Pop so beautiful and intelligent that you'll never risk seeing it on "Top of the Pops".
Already "Blueberry Boat" had made them known to the small audience and put them immediately under the mini-spotlight of our micro-showbiz. However, some of us (and by some, I mean "me," because I haven't asked others) found it a bit disjointed as an album: some highs, some lows, a tracklist (in terms of the overall flow of the tracks) not quite right, still beautiful but seemed to scream a phrase: "we can do better"; and I waited for that "better."

"Bitter Tea" is made up of 15 tracks, all recognizable and endowed with their own personality, yet it flows as if it were one long and pleasant conversation, because this is what the Fiery Furnaces do: they dialogue and tell stories, making words hop on synths, keyboards, muffled percussions, turning them around and sometimes rewinding them (there are very melodious passages of backward-played vocals, usually cacophonous, here perfectly integrated) on sweet and violent arrangements, and yet, despite the heterogeneity of the moods, the message's mood is very clear.
Everything is pervaded by a romanticism that is naive and mature at the same time, made of odd tempos, gospel organs, cabaret, vintage video game sounds, calypso, jazz, 60s pop, Dylan-esque songwriting.

Explosions of comic vitality in an adult world, disenchanted Dadaism or, in other words, everything that Pop should be.