Album Review 002: I want to sail between your thighs

Featured Album
Album Infinite Jest Band We Are The Fury Release Date January 24, 2006 Score
Featured Track
Better Off, This Way

The Track Listing

1. Better Off, This Way 2. Anesthetic Parade 3. Nation, Forgive Us 4. Parody At The Masquerade 5. Soap Opera

The Back Story

A few years ago, I was on purevolume.com when I stumbled across a band called “The Fury”. They had a very unique and incredibly upbeat and child-like quality about them. I bookmarked them and would listen to them every now and then. Last year I decided to check out their purevolume page again and noticed it redirected me to a band called “We Are The Fury” - their new name. However, it wasn’t just their name that had changed; their discography changed as well: they now had an EP on the horizon: "Infinite Jest". Over the following months, leading up to the EP’s release, I became more and more excited about this CD as they slowly added a few of the songs from it to their purevolume page. Finally it was released and to my dismay, it only included five songs. I could not bring myself to spend ten or so dollars (plus shipping, as these guys would not be setting foot in a Canadian record store for quite some time) on such a small number of songs. So I not to support both Amazon and We Are The Fury and basically forgot about them entirely. Then a friend of mine from one of my classes told me about this “place” where he could download “any album ever”. For some reason We Are The Fury popped into my head, so I asked him if he could download their EP for me; he could; he did; I got them.

The Album

When creating a band profile in purevolume, you are able to define your sound by specifying up to three genres of music you most closely coincide with. We Are The Fury chose Rock, Indie, and Alternative; I would have chosen Pop, Rock, and Indie. If I didn’t feature a song for you guys to listen to, I would describe these guys as being similar to bands like Hot Hot Heat, Ok Go, and Ima Robot. The most prominent similarity between these bands is the lead singers voice, which I find hard to describe in words (another upside to having a song accompany the review). I will, however, try my best by listing a series of adjectives that best describe the lead singer’s voice: youthful, somewhat-flamboyant (not in the lispy-faggy sense), feminine, high, tight, painful (not painful to listen to; he literally sounds like he could be in some kind of pain), somewhat-lazy, and distressful. This is an upbeat EP with nary a slow song; this is the kind of music you listen to if you want to convince a girl that your cool, not the kind you’d woo her with. It stars off with “Better Off, This Way”, the most upbeat song of them all. It begins with a deliciously bouncy/punchy intro (that ends up being the verses) that doesn’t waste any time introducing us to the whole band. The verse leads up into an unsurprisingly louder chorus that finishes with the quieter lyrics, “maybe it’s better off this way”. Naturally, we get a break-down after the second chorus that slowly builds up into the final forty seconds of chorus, ending quite abruptly. If they release (if they already haven’t) a single, this would be it. The second song begins with some muted lyrics and some sort of shaker that quickly lead up to a much louder and almost chorus-like verse. The volume then drops a little before quickly rising again for a typical basic-guitar and strained-voice combo chorus. The chorus falls into this singer + piano verse that is overwhelmed by the second and final chorus of the song; both the first and second songs are under three minutes. “Nation, Forgive Us” is the third song (middle song) and is my least favourite of the five. It begins with a bit o’ drums that are lead into the first verse with the bassist. Soon enough, Mr. Lyrics joins in, spitting out “You wanna talk about indecision?”. The verse eventually breaks down into what sounds like the pre-chorus, however, it takes us right back to another verse. Don’t worry though, the second pre-chorus leads into an overall louder chorus featuring an angrier twist on the lead singer’s voice. A very quiet and muted breakdown follows that leads again into the chorus that fades to black. The next song is substantially more mellow and less frantic. The verses feature some creatively whiny guitar solos over some periodic opening of the high-hat. Like the first song, the musicians resort to some basic guitar and piano work overshadowed by the lead singer’s friendly vocal track during the choruses. However, unlike the first song, this one ends the song with a wee bit of a guitar solo. The final song starts with the lead singer singing “I was a ghost from outer space” over a jumpy piano that swiftly feeds into the “official” verse. We then get a quick break-down right before the angriest and most complicated sounding chorus from the whole EP, which is ironic since the song’s basically about a guy proclaiming his loving and lustful feelings for some girl. VERSE. CHORUS. Then a drawn out instrumental part that lets the lead singer join in right before the third chorus. The song then begins its descent, lead by a small choir humming all the way to the end.

The Final Impressions

I decided to push the individual song reviews into the overall review as the EP was so short. The EP is very solid and has the band defining itself all the way through. Though these guys do not offer anything completely new to the scene, they separate themselves enough from the rest of the bands out there and create a fairly unique sound. However, if it weren’t for their vocalist, we would be left with some moderately talented musicians producing some been-there-done-that sounds, definitely not worth five full heart containers from yours truly. Fortunately, the vocalist can make or break a band, and the lead vocalist for these guys certainly makes this band what it is, hence my kind rating.