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THE FIERY FURNACES
EP
(Rough Trade)
The fact that the Fiery Furnaces refer to this 41-minute disc as an EP only begins to indicate the overachievement going on here. Not content with having produced two albums in less than two years, including last year's great Blueberry Boat, the Brooklyn brother-sister duo work out their neuroses in public once again on this epic "mini" album. As with Blueberry Boat and 2003's Gallowsbird's Bark, EP overflows with words, with instruments, with ideas. Eleanor Friedberger's voice is almost conversational as she relates tales of woe both domestic and international to the accompaniment of her brother Matthew's intricate arrangements. Behind her deadpan nonchalance, however, lurks a deep melancholy: In "Duffer St. George," she tells a seemingly simple story of a night out in swinging London until her voice unexpectedly cracks on the line "can I use your mobile . . . Sadie?" The chorus welds the name of the U.K. equivalent of Urban Outfitters, Duffer of St. George, to a children's rhyme to unsettling effect—you half expect Eleanor to break into maniacal laughter at any moment. Like the Furnaces' live show, there are no breaks between songs; the songs meld seamlessly into one another, creating an effect not unlike being buttonholed by a garrulous drunk at a party. At first it's slightly irritating, but Eleanor's voice, her contagious intelligence, and the songs' sneaky tunefulness draw you in anyway. DONNA BROWN
MATES OF STATE
All Day
(Polyvinyl)
Were I in a mean mood, I might say that a four-song EP is the ideal way to experience Mates of State. A full collection of two-piece drums-and-keyboards bounce-alongs does gradually dissipate some of its impact, after all, and the abbreviated format makes Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner exceptionally choosy: "Along for the Ride" is as taut a pop song as the couple has yet composed, the lulling "Drop and Anchor" as thoughtful a change-up as they've tossed our way. Besides, even if I were in an only slightly cranky mood, I might say that a four-song EP is the ideal way to experience plenty of decent bands, not to mention lots of mediocre rappers. But I'll say none of that, because my mood is bright, as it is whenever I've heard a Mates of State record. That's partly because the duo's exuberance isn't yippy-dog-at-your-heels peskiness or even Day-Glo-indie perkiness. From the first line of "Goods (It's All in Your Head)"—"This is the story with the fantastic lies"—there's a sense of issues being batted around and hammered out here. Plus, Hammel and Gardner squeeze a wide range of emotion from their all-but-uniform tempos, dipping into a ruminative coda on "Goods" without dragging the beat. Granted, open-ended form can be as tiring as an insistent up-and-up. So, would I say that it helps that they cover Bowie's conventionally structured "Starman" with a giddy karaoke feel that even captures Dave's bizarre pronunciation of "boo-gie"? Only if I were in a mean mood. And you know . . . KEITH HARRIS
Mates of State play Chop Suey with Aqueduct and Smoosh at 6 p.m. Sat., Feb. 26. $10 adv.
PAT METHENY GROUP
The Way Up
(Nonesuch)
Jazz-guitar innovator Pat Metheny no doubt saw his profile receive a little bump following the rise in certain circles of Tortoise and their Chicago post-rock peers: Jeff Parker, Tortoise's gifted guitarist, seems to have learned some of his tricks from the 50-year-old Missouri native—his sweet-and-sour tone, the way he'll draw a lone note or two out of an initial flurry—and there's an intricacy to the electro-acoustic ramblings of old Metheny records like As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls that's easy to hear as a precursor to the structural shenanigans that underpin a track such as Tortoise's "Djed." (If historical curiosity more often means downloading today than purchasing, well, that's why I referred to Metheny's profile instead of his portfolio.) On The Way Up, Metheny's first record for Nonesuch, the guitarist sounds anything but satisfied with his influence. For one thing, the album consists of a single 68-minute composition, an ambitious conceit Tortoise haven't yet stepped to. ("Djed," by comparison, is a mere 21.) For another, Metheny's palette still doggedly features in part sounds that have gotten no hipper with age: faux-tropical keyboard voices, smoothed-out quasi-Muzak synth washes, fretless bass that Enya would invite in for a cup of tea. He seems determined here to find the middle ground between Steve Reich's nimble minimalism and Bobby McFerrin's island-life jazz-pop (which is somewhat like locating a state between New York and California), and sometimes, as when a loose hip-hop beat shudders to life halfway through the disc's first movement, he hits it. MIKAEL WOOD
Pat Metheny plays the Paramount Theatre at 8 p.m. Sun., Feb. 27. $35–$60.
BROOKS
Red Tape
(Soundslike)
Red tape, traditionally used to bind legal documents, lends itself to a figure of speech that indicates bureaucratic excess, rules so harsh as to impede that which they're meant to enable. The phrase also neatly conveys the form and content of this second album from quirk-house wunderkind Andrew Brooks. Compositionally, Brooks follows methods similar to those of Soundslike founder Matthew Herbert, constructing tracks out of felicitous accidents and processed sounds culled from common consumer objects—the musical equivalent of the rule-based "potential literature" of Italo Calvino and Raymond Queneau's Oulipo group. Lyrically and in its Weimar-era musical references, Red Tape plays with the regulation of desire and sexual identity. On paper it's cumbersomely ambitious, but it succeeds when it comes through the speakers. Clunky sludge-funk anchors "Do the Math" when its campy gay-rights manifesto threatens to hurtle over the top, and the oblique closet story of "Enormous Members Club" builds into something similar to a barrel of monkeys exploding in the corner of your favorite little club. The sparse tech-clutter of "Mansize" is as powerful as PJ Harvey's original version, and Brooks does sing-song electronica peers Matthew Dear and Justus Kohncke one better: He combines the former's production skills with the latter's sense of song to serve up "Roxxy," a perfect pop sparkler of a love song with just a touch of menace, and the title song, an oompah of yearning fit for a Berlin cabaret. Whether Brooks intends the song's title to assert the universal formality of finding love or to hint about the object origin of that fluttery sound in its upper register, red tape has never sounded more appealing. KRISTAL HAWKINS
