Album of the Week/Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 7- Widow City

A cursory glance at Metacritic reveals that most of the Fiery Furnaces albums have almost exactly the same average score, with the highest placing contender being Gallowsbird's Bark. I bring this up because it's the least representative Furnaces album and also the most out-and-out rocking, so apparently what the majority of people like about the band is the times they play it more straightforward and break out the guitars. Which brings us to Widow City, a puzzlingly underrated album.

Widow City gives us the best of both worlds: it's got the usual Fiery Furnaces tricks up its sleeve--unconventional, suite-like songs, strange keyboard flourishes and sounds, fascinatingly wordy lyrics, etc.--but it also thoroughly brings back the rock that we've only seen bits and pieces of since the first two albums. 'Clear Signal From Cairo', in its winding six minute duration, moves from city leveling riffs to fugue-like repetitions of the melody to breath-taking full stop rest breaks with Eleanor. Much has been made of Widow City being the band's 70s album, but I don't know that I've heard anything from that decade that sounds quite like 'Navy Nurse', which starts with what could possibly be a huge Led Zeppelin guitar-and-drum riff before coasting into a willowy pop section with (almost) funky keyboards--and back again. Then there's 'The Old Hag Is Sleeping', where the new addition of the Chamberlin organ (a kind of Mellotron-ish instrument) comes to the full fore, with animal sounds used as instruments.

The thing that will immediately stick out about Widow City is how different it sounds from previous Furnaces releases, though you may not know exactly why it is yet. During the recording of the album, touring drummer Bob D'Amico joined the band in the studio, instead of the usual "Matt Friedberger plays everything and Eleanor sings almost everything" set up they had been going with. This results in something other reviewers have sometimes mentioned: a more "live" sounding album. If the Fiery Furnaces haven't sounded this heavy and rocking for a long time, it's largely because the drums are usually not synthesized like they often were in the past. On its own, this doesn't make the album better, but when you've also got Matt getting on the guitar more often than he has for awhile, it adds up to a rocking, lively album.

Lively is a good word for Widow City, because I don't remember having this much fun listening to a Fiery Furnaces album in a long time. On first listen it sounded like the strongest thing they'd done Blueberry Boat, and a few months of listening have borne this out. I attribute this both to the aforementioned rocking/liver sound and to the best and most memorable set of songs they've released since Blueberry Boat. 'Wicker Whatnots' is lucid fun, with a ferocious guitar/keyboard line, scattershot drums, and a jungle percussion break that slithers out of nowhere and back before you have time to smile. 'The Philadelphia Grand Jury', like 'Quay Cur' off of Blueberry Boat, is the first and longest track, a genuine classic Fiery Furnaces epic for voice, Chamberlin, guitar, drums, keyboards, bass, and whatever else they feel like throwing in. What initially seem like arbitrary and shiftless section changes reveal themselves, in that patented Fiery Furnaces way, to be bite sized delights that eventually form a larger chunk of deliciousness.

If I've not made it clear by now, Widow City is my favorite Fiery Furnaces album after Blueberry Boat. In time it may even surpass that ship in my heart. Ultimately it shouldn't matter, because they're both amazing, brilliant albums that deserve wider recognition.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 6- Matt Friedberger- Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School

Listening to this double album release by one half of the Fiery Furnaces, it strikes me how contradictory it is--everything about it, every angle I attack it from, presents paradoxes that don't quite square. If nothing else, Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School reveals that nothing about the Fiery Furnaces is ever as cut-and-dry as it seems.

The first thing we need to get out of the way is why, exactly, Matt did these two solo albums. In press during the release, he mentions that his sister, Eleanor, was on vacation and the Furnaces had a "logjam" of records to release, and this was the quickest way to clear the chute, so to speak. However...it's one of those paradoxes of the release: both albums could have been done with the regular Furnaces crew, but at the same time, listening to these songs enough, it's hard for me to imagine how Eleanor would or could fit in.

The second thing we need to deal with are the statements that Holy Ghost Language School is the crazy, experimental album and Winter Women is the easy, sweet pop album. Let's start with Holy Ghost, shall we?? I read somewhere that Matt thinks of it as being analogous to the Residents or 'the most out moments from Brian Eno's solo albums', which makes me wonder if he's ever listened to that music. The truth is that Holy Ghost Language School will not be much of a struggle for anyone weaned on earlier Fiery Furnace releases. The only 'experimental' bits are that it focuses heavily on drum machines and keyboards and has spoken word bits that move the concept along, just as Rehearsing My Choir did. But unlike Rehearsing My Choir, they're used sparingly, and Holy Ghost uses just as many long, expository instrumental passages that sound like Matt's ego--and talent--being released into full flight. I get the feeling that people don't like Holy Ghost Language School for two reasons. The first is that they've talked themselves into thinking it's experimental and "noisy" and so won't give it another chance. As I said, the truth is quite different: it's nowhere near as experimental or difficult as it's made out to be. The second reason I think people don't like Holy Ghost is that they compare it too much to Winter Women rather than letting it stand on its own and appreciating it for its merits. It's no masterpiece, but Holy Ghost Language School isn't the tossed off thinkpiece that many would have you believe.

As for Winter Women, well, it is a poppier record. Songs like 'The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company Resignation Letter' and 'Ruth Vs. Rachel' are instantly catchy and accessible, largely due to inclusion of guitars, but even then, there's still too many odd keyboard flourishes and odd sound loops to truly qualify the album as true pop. Also, and this is crucial, Winter Women is simply too long for its own good. You'd think that the run times of both albums were switched: when I think of an easygoing, sunny summer pop album, I think of something between 30 to 45 minutes in length. But Winter Women goes on for more than an hour, while the more experimental Holy Ghost Language School is short--some might say mercifully so--at around 46 minutes. I fully admit to preferring and enjoying Winter Women more than Holy Ghost Language School, but they aim for entirely different things and, more often than not, succeed at them.

The last thing I want to say about this release is how much of a gift it is to fans who love Matt's voice. I tend to think that he lets Eleanor take lead vocals a bit too often--Widow City, on first listen, struck me as almost a Matt-less album--because I like his voice and style a lot. He's got a very solid, pretense-less, unaffected voice that always worked well in the context of the skewed music he makes because it contrasts so nicely with it, and always gives one a human element to latch unto. Particularly on Winter Women, Matt fans get the alone time they always wanted but might not have realized quite how much they did.

Even though I like both of these albums a lot, I can't bring myself to give them more than 3 stars. I don't particularly love them, and it's one of those releases where if you even know about it, you're probably already a fan or a hater, so anything I say or do won't sway you. What we're left with is a pop album that isn't completely a pop album, and an experimental album that isn't really an experimental album. Those who love the Furnaces will have more to chew on, while haters will have more ammo to fight with. Even Matt seems to see the situation humorously, in an interview with Pitchfork, where he goes into why he decided to release a double solo album. I'll leave you with this quote:

"There's no fun in having a solo record. You know, it's a very boring story: a guy from a non-popular band to have an even less popular solo record. That's not very interesting. But at least with two records, that seems like such a waste of people's time as to be more amusing."

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 5- Bitter Tea

After the frustrating Rehearsing My Choir album, I probably would have taken any subsequent release from the Fiery Furnaces as a return to form. Funny, then, that Bitter Tea was apparently recorded around the same time as that album and intended as a companion piece--though for the life of me I don't know why, since it's nothing like Rehearsing My Choir and would only serve as a palette cleanser.

I suppose, then, that's always been my assessment of Bitter Tea. It initially struck me as mediocre and confused, but with a year or two behind it, Bitter Tea stands as the great album it always was. So, why couldn't I see it at first?? Partially it was because it followed Rehearsing My Choir and I thought of it as an "OK, they haven't totally lost the plot" kind of apologetic release. Which it isn't, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Mostly I thought of it as confused and mediocre because of the heavy emphasis on keyboards and experimental backwards vocal conceits. The songs of Bitter Tea are every bit as good as Blueberry Boat when I consider them piece by piece, but as a whole they don't have the same transcendent feeling. I think that's because there's not enough guitars on this album. Not that other Furnace albums didn't have mounds of keyboards, but they also rocked out from time to time. Bitter Tea could almost qualify as their new wave album, if I were so inclined to label it. At the same time, it's their backwards vocal funhouse album.

Please remember that I have nothing against backwards vocals: I actually love Pullhair Rubeye unlike seemingly the rest of the world. But too often bands use it for self consciously difficult reasons, and your mileage will vary. On Bitter Tea, it only seems to work when it isn't the central function of the song. 'Vietnamese Telephone Ministry' irritates me because it's almost six minutes of dueling backwards and forwards vocals, mutated keyboards, and skittering drums; it never congeals into anything other than "my, that was a neat experiment...what's the next song??" Six other songs from the album use backwards effects, but since they don't feature them so prominently, they work. They pop up in the beginning of 'Oh Sweet Woods' and are peppered throughout, for example, but the grooving dance beats and sweet acoustic guitar instrumentation are at the heart of the song, not a bunch of gibberish.

I apologize for the abrupt transition (though in retrospect it's apropos for the Fiery Furnaces), but I want to get back to my original point about this being a palette cleansing, apologetic release. Since Bitter Tea sounds closest in spirit and sonics to Blueberry Boat, its lasting impression on me was always that of a safe album, a reminder to us of why we loved the band in the first place. Well, it does remind us of why we loved them, but that's due to its own merits and not its adherence to Blueberry Boat blueprints. In the end, it wasn't so much a palette cleanser as it helps isolate Rehearsing My Choir as the oddity in the Fiery Furnaces' discography, doubly so because it was recorded at the same time as that album. How different would feelings for both be if their releases were switched, and Bitter Tea came out after Blueberry Boat and EP??

There's a lot to say about the album that has nothing to do with the music, and I feel bad about that. Here I am six paragraphs in and I've only scraped the surface!! Well, let me just jump into it: 'Police Sweater Blood Vow' is another oddly perfect Fiery Furnaces pop song that could've easily fit into the latter half of Bluebery Boat, with a joyous "vibrate buzz buzz ring and beep/tell me babe what time is it now??" chorus. The first four songs build up steam in a near-suite of energy that releases in the ballad punch of 'Teach Me Sweetheart', truly one of Eleanor's best vocal performances on record. Finally, there's 'Nevers', which works wonders with the backwards vocal shtick by switching back and forth between regular and backwards seemingly word by word, before repeating the melody of the song in constantly mutating ways. Too bad, then, that two songs are repeated in different mixes at the end of the album. This sort of thing always bugged me about The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips, too. But I digress.

I feel as though I've said so much about Bitter Tea and yet not enough. But then again, that goes for every Fiery Furnaces release--they're as fun to talk about as they are to listen to. But all that really matters is that, once all the equations were figured and votes tallied, Bitter Tea still stands as a great Fiery Furnaces album: nothing more, and nothing less.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 4- Rehearsing My Choir

I've always admired artists who can throw their audience a total curveball. They zig when you think they're going to zag. An actor known for comedies makes some serious films. A writer known for transgressive fiction does a ghost story. And a band known for highly conceptual and idiosyncratic experimental pop music produces what amounts to a radioplay about their Grandma, who takes over lead vocals. Uhhh, right.

On second thought, Rehearsing My Choir shouldn't have been that much of a stretch. Blueberry Boat has some kind of story, but it jumps around so much and goes on so many tangents that don't seem to fit in anywhere that the average person will never notice or care. So while you could healthily ignore Blueberry Boat's story and still enjoy it, Rehearsing My Choir forces its story upon you. Indeed, it's the very point of the album--something about the Friedberger siblings' Grandmother's life. However, it's perversely told out of order, so piecing it out is only slightly easier than Blueberry Boat.

That's my main problem with the album right there: it's more concerned with telling a story than it is featuring great music, and it doesn't do storytelling very well. Rehearsing My Choir is the wordiest Fiery Furnaces album by a large margin, and most of that verbiage comes from the spoken word of Grandma Furnace. I don't have anything against her voice, but since you're rarely more than 30 seconds time without it, it's a love it or hate it proposition. Though Eleanor sings in her usual sweet way, this time out she contrasts too sharply with her Grandmother instead of blending nicely with her sibling. At any rate, I defy anyone who isn't a member of the Friedberger family to care about and piece together the "plot", so to speak.

The other problem I have with the album is that it's just not very good as a musical piece. Since all of the instrumentation is in the service of the story, nothing can live on its own or produce memorable melodies that aren't welded roughly to seemingly endless sentences of exposition. Ever ytime I've listened to the album, only bits and pieces stand out to me; never whole songs, and never anytime when the Grandmother or Eleanor are singing. The crazy keyboard freakout toward the end of 'Slavin' Away' is, frankly, awesome, but things like this are too few. You may have noticed that I'm not discussing the songs or music much in this review, but they don't especially matter. Rehearsing My Choir is like one giant slab of pianos, keyboards, drums, and guitars; though the basic tools are the same ones used in previous Fiery Furnace releases, they don't produce anything exceptional musically other than frustrating snippets like the one I just mentioned.

I can't imagine Rehearsing My Choir being anyone's favorite Fiery Furnaces album. I wouldn't say it's especially difficult or experimental; there are many, many albums and pieces of music that are, and make Rehearsing My Choir seem like the first few Beatles albums. In its defense, Rehearsing My Choir is an interesting listen. It's not the utter disaster I sometimes make it out to be; it is worth hearing at least twice all the way through before one makes up one's mind. But that's the thing...

Rehearsing My Choir still doesn't strike me as good or even great. It sounds similar to other Fiery Furnace releases, but as it's an attempt at a radioplay, you can't divorce the story from the setting. I find it more interesting to talk about the album than it is to listen to it, and even then, I think the way it tells the story is willfully obscure and hard to enjoy. Basically, Rehearsing My Choir fails both to tell a story well and to produce good music. It's not crap but it's easily the worst Fiery Furnaces album.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 3- EP

I'm resisting the urge to begin my review by making the obvious joke about how the Fiery Furnaces are so long winded their EPs are as long as another band's album...and I suppose I just did. Regardless, it's hard to know what to make, conceptually, of this release. The EP label may be an ironic one by a band who've always had more of a sense of humor than we give them credit for, but it's also misleading label, too.

So, then: after releasing Blueberry Boat the Fiery Furnaces had a handful of singles that predated it which either never saw release in the U.S. or were largely ignored. As demand for new product arose after everybody lost their collective minds over their second album, the band and/or their record label decided to compile a stop-gap release until the next album(s). The term "stop-gap" release is a loaded one, weighted down with negative connotations of shoveling a bunch of crap together into a pile to exploit cash soaked fans, but let me assure you that EP is a substantial release in its own right, and the one thing we'd heard before--'Tropical Ice-Land', here spelled 'Tropical-Iceland'--appears in a different form.

I've long wrestled with the idea of which Fiery Furnaces release makes for the best introduction to the band. I tend to just want to foist Blueberry Boat unto their plate and tell them to eat until they get it. However, in listening to EP in the context of the rest of the band's discography, it's easily the most compact and digestible meal to be had. At only 10 songs and 40ish minutes, it's almost like an appetizer to whet one's appetite for the full(er) albums.

As for the music, well, it steers carefully toward the pop side of the Furnaces' persona. While there are touches of the experimentation and song suite stylings from Blueberry Boat, they are largely kept in check by sweet melodies and strong songwriting. 'Cousin Chris' is pretty unorthodox, but the burbling keyboard parts and the Friedberger siblings syrupy vocals help the medicine go down. Meanwhile, all the restraint has been stripped from the aforementioned 'Tropical Ice-Land': in its 'Tropical-Iceland' revision, it's a surging new wave rocker, much zestier but less filling. If there's a weak spot here, it's 'Sweet Spots', which sounds and feels like a transitional song between Gallowsbird's Bark and Blueberry Boat but doesn't top or even equal anything from those two albums; instead, it's a chugging, repetitive number with "yeah yeah" refrains that feel apathetic and thrown together. Thankfully, the rest of the release is ace, including 'Duffer St. George', which sets its chorus to the tune of "Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care" (or whatever that 'song' is called) and is gleeful fun because of it.

Really, you can't go wrong with EP. It's equivalent to a full album for the price of an EP (roughly $10 last time I checked), and it will please diehard fans as well as it does newcomers.

Album of the Week/Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 2: Blueberry Boat

There comes a point in any great band's life where they make that huge artistic leap and manage to create a work that is both the best thing they've ever done and something that seemingly points in infinite directions for the future. Sometimes this happens before a band releases anything so that their debut album is their huge leap. Other times it happens an album or more into the band's career. Then there's freaks like Radiohead who've made artistic leaps at least twice.

With Blueberry Boat, the Fiery Furnaces made this leap. While Gallowsbird's Bark and the singles that would make up the eventual EP release were great in their own way, they don't hold a candle to the consistency, freshness, and utter genius of this album.

Blueberry Boat was, for me, the sort of album you hear and remember why you love music, and the album format specifically, so much. None of these songs could work on their own, but if listened to as a whole, they form a brilliant suite of songs that melt into each other or rapidly jump between themes back and forth like hopscotch.

The easiest way I can think of to explain the greatness of the album is to use a formula: take the revolutionary song suite 'A Quick One While He's Away' by the Who, add to it Gallowbird's Bark's last three tracks (which segue together like a trio suite), and multiply by inspiration. The music is largely similar to the instrumentation found on the Furnaces' first album, with guitars, keyboards, pianos, drums, various percussive instruments, and oddities like sitars (or so I'm told, I'd have never figured it out on my own). However, things are taken to a ridiculously fun extreme on this album--this is really the point where the band's keyboard obsession made itself known, but in a good way. Unlike later releases which could be too keyboard heavy, Blueberry Boat gets the balance right and remembers to rock out every so often.

The album is ostensibly a concept album about somebody sailing a ship with a cargo of blueberries--actually, I'm not sure what the story is supposed to be, but you don't need to even care to appreciate the album. I've made this metaphor before, but listening to Fiery Furnace albums is like taking shots of liquor. You just have to jump in and hang on for the ride, trusting the band's instincts and having a good time (if any is to be had...we'll get to Rehearsing My Choir some other time). In fact, that concept of "fun" is what initially struck me about the album the first time I heard it--the way the songs flow into each other or juxtapose elements, all the while with great melodies and strong songwriting, makes for one of the most joyously fun indie rock albums I've ever heard.

I'm going to feel like a broken record by the time I get to Widow City, but the problems you may or may not have with Blueberry Boat are universal to all Fiery Furnace releases. Yes, it's long: just over 75 minutes. Yes, it's complex: the first song, 'Quay Cur', is over 10 minutes in length and is an overwhelming way to start the album. Yes, it's pretentious: the lyrics are frequently wordy and bookish. However, as a fan, I don't see these things as bad. It's more that certain albums are good enough to make you forget or outright appreciate these elements. Blueberry Boat never overstays its welcome for me; I love every song and find it hard to stop listening to it once I've started. The complexity also isn't bad. Sometimes you need to give an album a few spins to learn its logic and sense of itself to anticipate changes and song sections that initially seemed chaotic and random, but will eventually seem perfectly placed. As for the pretentiousness, well, I happen to like smart lyrics that mention, say, obscure elements of history or science, so I've got no problem there.

While I am stressing the suite-like, long, and complicated nature of the songs for good reason, the latter half of the album features a few sweet, short, and unpretentious pop songs. 'Birdie Brain' is on par with 'Tropical Ice-land' from the first album as one of the finest songs they've yet written, and every time it gets to the part where the male Friedberger sibling takes over vocals for the "I've been told the branch of the stream..." bit, I get chills. Similarly, 'Turning Round' is a gorgeous late album impressionistic piece like 'Cry Baby Cry' off the White Album, and something I almost always try to work into mixtapes because I love it that much. Lastly, 'Spaniolated' is a shimmery mid-tempo ballad-like tune with a melancholy tinge that quotes the childhood couplet "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

I would go into the longer songs, but frankly it would ruin the fun of listening to the album. Suffice it to say that, while I certainly love the other Fiery Furnace albums (again, other than Rehearsing My Choir) they just don't do it as well or as consistently as Blueberry Boat. It is exceedingly rare that a band's most complex and long winded album is their best, but such is the magic of Blueberry Boat. Go buy this album now.

In Case You Missed It: Cat Power- Speaking For Trees

Growing up, I came to understand that there would be certain types of women I would always get crushes on. Maybe the term 'archetype' is more correct. Anyway, one of these was the "sad, quiet, and probably crazy girl." This archetype is as much a part of me projecting unto someone as it is their inherent qualities. At the same time, I somehow discovered Cat Power's music, and ever since then, I've always thought of Chan Marshall as the mother of all these sad little girls I would be doomed to be misguidedly attracted to.
After a handful of albums that filled out the borderlands of sadness, isolation, romantic pining, and cynicism, Cat Power's original "persona" seemed to reach perfection with The Covers Record and take another turn with You Are Free, a much poppier and livelier affair. By the time of The Greatest, Chan Marshall had mostly given up drinking, had started to finish live shows instead of nervously leaving in the middle, had begun to model (?!)...it was like watching the fragile, skinny art student I had a crush on turn into a prom queen. The absolute worst part, though, was that her music started to become awful. The Greatest is probably a great album if you never listened to Cat Power before, all its country/soul/R&B posing a sickeningly inauthentic gleam that let me know she was no longer "for" me. This was confirmed further when I saw her perform at the 2007 Pitchfork Music Festival, with her slick session musician band that included her dressing in ridiculous late 80s apparel (complete with fingerless gloves) and a pianist chick who chainsmoked cigarettes and so badly wanted to look cool.
So, then, Speaking For Trees marks the last time the old Cat Power was seen. In some ways, it's a perfect funeral for her old self: a two hour performance piece set in rural New York, during which she plays a series of songs in a halting, awkward manner. I find it equally spellbinding and boring, but in the end, it's as I said: the perfect funeral for her old self. It just seems like the kind of thing the mother of all "sad, quiet, and probably crazy girls" would do.
The film switches locations a few times, and the director arbitrarily messes with filters and settings to make it appear darker toward the end of the film, but there isn't much to say other than "it's static shots of Cat Power performing songs with nothing but an electric guitar, an unseen amp, and her voice." Ambience and nature sounds creep in. Between songs she stretches, itches, pushes up her sleeves, fiddles with her guitar, etc.
A lot of the time she spends facing away from the camera. Not that you can see her face that well from such distance and with bangs covering her face. Oh, Chan, you bewitching minx. How did you know I liked that?!
And then, all is as darkness. I didn't even try to listen to her new record because as I said, she's no longer for me. Goodnight and good luck, Cat Power. I'll always remember you.

Primer: Fiery Furnaces Part 1- Gallowsbird's Bark

The Fiery Furnaces make for one of the more fascinating stories in indie rock, emerging into our consciousness on the wave of the early 00's garage rock boom, settling into critical darling status with 2004's Blueberry Boat, blowing it with Rehearsing My Choir, and recovering with Bitter Tea and Widow City. At the same time, their music is equally...ok, realistically, the music is much, much more fascinating than the story behind it, a sound that is by turns complex and simple, catchy and obtuse, retro and futuristic.

For all the talk--and boasting from Matt Friedberger--about how prolific the band is, the Fiery Furnaces have only released 5 albums in the past 6 years (one more if you count the EP release, two more if you count Matt's solo double album). And it all began with 2003's Gallowsbird's Bark, a release that at the time made sense in the context of the White Stripes/Strokes/The Hives garage band era of the early years of this decade. Looking back now, though, the Fiery Furnaces were always weirder and more diverse than their contemporaries. Certainly I don't want to make the impression that Gallowsbird's Bark is as strange as what was to come, but it's also misleading to call it garage rock. Though it does have far more guitars and shorter songs than any other Fiery Furnaces release, it still has a hefty dose of trademark keyboards, songwriting twists, and wordy, book-ish lyrics.

The main thing that strikes me about the album now is how close it sounds to future Fiery Furnaces releases. The common consensus that this is their "rock" album or their "pop" album (or both) is mostly true, but it's still far from something as accessible and populist as the contemporary releases from the Strokes or Fiery Furnaces. I've been listening to the Fiery Furnace albums as a patchwork quilt for a week or so now, and Gallowsbird's Bark doesn't stand out as much as you might think. Witness a song like 'Two Fat Feet': sure, it's got the sludgy garage rock guitar riff, but it's also got a flirty, fancy piano/keyboard line and lyrics that include the word "snaggletooth." Then there's 'Inca Rag/Name Game', effectively two seamless songs in one, which--as every review probably will mention--points the way to the genius song suites of Blueberry Boat.

Speaking of which, the final three songs of the album are one of the finest things the band has ever done. A true link to Blueberry Boat, 'Tropical Ice-land', 'Rub-Alcohol Blues', and 'We Got Back The Plague' are a continuous trio of songs, each every bit as distinct as the others and yet fitting together perfectly. 'Tropical Ice-land' in particular deserves praise as both a fan favorite and one of their best songs, so much so that an alternate "single" version appears on the EP release. I prefer this version over that peppy, new wave rave up. It starts with a melancholy, complicated guitar line after a false start and then the glorious lyrics begin under a swath of gauzy acoustic guitars. The beautiful refrain will stick in your head for days--sing it with me: "tropical icey icey"--and the odd chirping sounds and stray percussive touches will remind you that, even at their pop-iest, there is always more going on than there seems in Fiery Furnaces land.

On its own, Gallowsbird's Bark is an incredible album. The only problem I have with it is that, while it's only around 46 minutes long, it's also 16 songs and so it always feels longer than it is. This is a problem common to all Fiery Furnaces releases, though in latter cases it will be because they actually are long albums. Anyway, on its own the album is great and still the best place to enter the Fiery Furnaces world. However, in terms of the band's discography, it's only above Rehearsing My Choir in my estimation. That's not to say it's a bad album or even a bad Fiery Furnaces album; I think I've made that clear enough. But, what's still to come--which I will get to in time--is exponentially more interesting and rewarding.

The Videogame Solipsist: Genesis

I forgot the thing originally had a headphone jack...

Today is my birthday. I'm 24 years old, and it's occurred to me that the 16 bit era was probably the happiest time of my life. The era began, roughly, when I entered first grade and ended sometime around when I was in middle school, so the SNES and--especially--the Sega Genesis are irrevocably tied up with the happiest of times. I also tend to be a 16 bit fundamentalist because I think the early to mid 90s were the golden era of videogames, both on PC and console.

Anyway, it's my birthday and I want to talk about the Sega Genesis. Which my sister and I actually got for Easter. I know, right?? It was strange. Sometime during the NES era we began to see and hear about the Sega Genesis. For whatever reason, we didn't want a SNES. Mostly, I think, the Genesis had a lot of games we wanted. A neighbor came over and hooked up his Genesis and we were completely blown away by the first Sonic game. Once we saw the other games for the system in Toys R' Us (for that was videogame mecca for children at the time), especially Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2, my sister and I begged our parents to get it for us. So, instead of any Easter candy, we got a Genesis. It must've been Easter of '92, because by then Sonic 1 was a pack-in with the system.

Looking back on it now, owning a Genesis was when I became a serious gamer. During the NES era, nobody really thought in those terms because everybody had the fucking thing. Sometimes you would go to clean your chimney and you'd find three NES's inside, black with soot. But during the Genesis era, I was a bit older and a bit nerdier, and I became what the kids today call "hardcore." I had a subscription to the Sega Visions magazine and would look forward to releases, sometimes even knowing their release date and going to find them on said day. All of my friends made the move to Genesis, and it's now I pause to emphasize the significance of the name. For the U.S., this was the beginning of Sega. I had a friend who owned a Master Sytem, but he was a bit off, and hid the thing under his bed in shame. Sadly, Sega would squander all momentum they had built up with the Genesis, so in the end I guess the name the rest of the world knows the system as (Mega Drive) was a bit more apropos.

My fondest memories of the Genesis are easily the Shining Force games and playing various games co-operatively with friends and my sister. I used to rent Sega games based on how cool they looked on the boxart and screenshots on the back, so Shining Force II fell unto my lap during 1994. My friend Dave and I latched unto this game like addicts, and between the two of us we probably paid for it in rental fees. It remains my favorite strategy RPG because I love the way Camelot designs interfaces, and I think they hit the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity in the gameplay/battle system department. One of my best memories is going to some mall in another part of Ohio for a flower show for my Mom and begging her to buy me the first Shining Force for $35. That seemed like so much money at the time, but I had never seen it for sale anywhere, so...

I digress.

Playing Genesis with friends seemed like a huge deal. It was a moment of pride to show off a new game to friends, either playing together or passing the controller around. General Chaos was probably our favorite because, at the time, we were all military fanatics. However, Genesis was also the last time my Sister ever devoted time to videogames. We routinely kicked ass in Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2 together, though she had to be the cliche and always play as the girl character.


Toward the end of the Genesis's lifespawn, you got the feeling that Sega had lost their fucking minds. The Sega CD seemed cool, but it was so damn expensive your parents would never spend that much on an add-on for a console that was perfectly fine on its own. I never knew anyone who had it, and the only game I've ever played for it was some shitty Dracula FMV adventure game that my friend Dave bought years later with the system, all under the intention of eventually getting Shining Force CD. As for the 32X, well, I actually played a few games for it, but that was always on the demo station at one of the videostores. It was just another expensive add-on my parents would never go for, and what made it worse was that by the time I might have convinced them to get it for me, a combination of wanting a SNES for Chrono Trigger and the announcement of the Saturn effectively killed any small interest I had in the 32X.

So it goes.

Isaac Brock's Not-So-Secret Alter Ego...??

Sooner or later, people in bands get restless. They want to do new and/or different things, and for whatever reason--the other members don't want to do it, they want to strike out on their own, the band is about to break up, etc.--they eventually do a side project, solo album, or collaboration. Such was the case with Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock.

After birthing the magnum opus The Moon & Antarctica in 2000, he eventually began work on the Ugly Casanova album. Purportedly the "band" of one Edgar Graham, it was eventually revealed that Brock created this character in order to free himself up from having to do interviews--and, possibly, from having to explain himself. The band also features Tim Rutili from Califone and Pall Jenkins from The Black Heart Procession. As a footnote, both Rutili and producer Brian Deck also worked on The Moon & Antarctica, so there is some overlap between the two releases.

The first question that always comes up with a side project, for me at least, is this: why was it necessary?? Well, in Sharpen Your Teeth's case, it's for two reasons. The first is the genuinely great collaborations that take place. Though the majority of these songs could easily have fit on a Modest Mouse album with no handwringing from fans, the vocals by Rutili and Jenkins add a new dimension and character to the sound. I confess to not knowing much about either Califone or Black Heart Procession, but their voices blend and contrast with Brock perfectly--witness 'Hotcha Girls' and 'Cat Faces' for some truly spellbinding moments.

The other reason this couldn't have been a Modest Mouse release: the lyrics are incredibly poetic, often to the point of abstraction. Brock's lyrics took a transformative turn on The Moon & Antarctica toward a more metaphysical, deep, and introspective direction. They could often veer toward the psychedelic and strange, but Sharpen Your Teeth takes the ball and runs with it. Though the lyrics aren't of the clever-wordplay-that-sounds-cool-but-I-don't-know-what-it-means" of Pavement, they nevertheless have a similar "it sounds good, but I don't really follow." 'Smoke Like Ribbons' presents us with:

"Smoke was pulled like ribbons from the windows of the car
I followed the flash of silver from your teeth
above the tarmac the lights were icy green
buried in patterns in your chest, a quiet shimmering
little dipper, tiara-shine, song bird shivery, thin thin dime."

Meanwhile, 'Diamonds On The Face Of Evil' is a series of odd observations with meaningless words tacked on as a kind of refrain:

"The dancers didn't have their feet on aw sheh shah sheh shah
Penny didn't have to whistle aw sheh shah sheh shah
She forgot to lay the eggs ah sheh shah sheh shah
Families in the graveyard diggin' ah sheh shah sheh shah."

As a side project, Sharpen Your Teeth is an interesting footnote in Modest Mouse history. For fans of the band, it makes for an alternative to what they would release afterward. Personally, it was the last time Brock released something wholly great. I liked Good News For People Who Love Bad News but it also felt like a step down from The Moon & Antarctica, as well as a step in the wrong direction--something which We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank would prove. However, don't get me wrong. Sharpen Your Teeth is no masterpiece. Its two weakest songs, 'Ice On The Sheets' and 'Beesting' are back to back, and blunt the impact of the album. The former is weak for Brock's predilection for the repetitive lo-fi "yelling through a bullhorn" vocal production sound, and at more than 6 minutes it feels like an eternity. The latter is just plain irritating even at a sub-minute run time and could easily have been left on the cutting room floor. Luckily, the album recovers for its last third, and closes with the magnificent one-two punch of 'Things I Don't Remember' and 'So Long To The Holidays.'

I suspect that this album isn't that well known, despite the popularity of Modest Mouse. I didn't know about it until a year or so after its release when I was looking for gifts for a girlfriend, and it was a great surprise for us both. And really, that's what you're going to get out of Sharpen Your Teeth. As I said before, it's no masterpiece--or even a secret masterpiece, considering its side project status--but it is a truly great album that fans of Modest Mouse will undoubtedly appreciate.

The Videogame Solipsist: NES

Oh my my, oh hell yes (image taken from VGmuseum.com)

I must have gotten the NES in '88. It was for my 4th birthday, and I'll always remember this because while my parents had gotten me the NES my grandparents on my Mom's side had gotten me an electric racecar track. While I played with the latter for 15 minutes or so while my Dad set up the NES, it would--obviously--never become a fixture for me. It was as if my entire future were set up then and there as a choice of toys: become the cool kid racing cars or become the Nintendo nerd.

My first memory of the NES was simply trying to get past the first enemy in Mario. Certainly we messed around with Duck Hunt but Mario held us transfixed. The coordination it took to somehow defeat the relentless Goomba seemed like a mountain I could never hope to climb; this also marked the last time my Dad would ever play a videogame, let alone be better at it than me. Only he could get to the end of the level at first, and my sister and I were jealous.

Still, it was an amazing new toy. A game you played on the TV--yet it wasn't just a game. You could put other game cartridges into it, too, not unlike tapes in a VCR. I honestly don't remember when I began to get other games, or what those were, but it seemed like everyone you knew had a Nintendo back then and different games to try. Eventually you rented scores of them from videostores--in the end I probably only owned a dozen or so games, but must have played a hundred or so more.

Actually, that was the big thing about the NES: its ubiquity. There were so many games for the damn thing that I eventually played something from every genre even before I began to use genre distinctions. Dragon Warrior was baffling until years later when I played Shining Force on the Genesis and learned about "levels" in terms of character power and not what stage you were on. Anyway, all my friends and neighbors had it and we would help each other on games. I'll always remember how my older neighbor Adam got really far into the first Zelda and during one summer used to come over every day and help me through it. Funnily enough, when his sister had a birthday party once, I spent most of it playing a gift for her: Rad Racer. Even then, I liked doing things alone--please, resist the urge to make the obvious joke here.

As for the games I played...well, this would be a really long post if I went through them all. Suffice it to say that the obvious ones--Zeldas, Marios, whatnot--were all amazing and mindblowing. Oddly, even back then I found Metroid obtuse and frustrating, though one of my friends insisted it was the best game ever. I remember playing games competitively and co-operatively for the first time on the NES, too, which was just as fun as playing them alone--if not more so. This was also during the era when you didn't scour websites every few hours to see if the Smash Brothers date had slipped; you pretty much heard about games from Nintendo Power or clerks at the store or video rental place and that was it. I recall the first Turtles game being a total bitch to find, both because of its popularity and the fact you couldn't find it to buy anywhere because nobody knew if it was out or not. Of course this was before everyone realized that the game was harder than a pair of diamond testicles and controlled like utter shit.

The end of the NES was particularly interesting to me because people weren't really sure what to do. The assumption amongst adults seemed to be "hey, this thing was supposed to be like a VHS tape player!! You're just supposed to get new games, not new systems!!" Sometime in 1992 or 1993 I got a Sega Genesis because most of my friends had it and the games looked so much better than the NES. For some reason, the SNES didn't interest us. About this time the NES began to start into the era of "blow into the end of it, blow into the machine itself, cut yourself and swear a blood oath to Yamauchi" in order to get the damn thing to work. But with time, the NES became a very fondly remembered piece of hardware which we would all dig out from time to time for nostalgia's sake. The majority of the games don't hold up as well anymore, partially because as kids we had no critical faculties, but enough of them do to make the system still worth playing.

Except that my grandma sold my NES and 5 games for like $15 at a garage sale in the mid 90s. I think it was revenge for ignoring the electric racecars.

Album of the Week: Harmonia- Musik Von Harmonia

If you know anything about Brian Eno, you know that it would take a pretty outstanding situation for him to actively seek out a band and join it. Though he has collaborated with many, many musicians over the years, the only time I can think that he went out of his way to work with someone was in the mid 70s when he pursued Germany's Harmonia, a krautrock "supergroup" featuring members of Cluster and Neu!.

The band's first album, Musik Von Harmonia, was released in 1974, and led Brian Eno to declare the band "the world's most important rock band" (or something to that effect). It's not hard to see Eno's point of view, since he was splitting time between his brilliant experimental pop albums and his fledgling ambient work--Musik Von Harmonia splits the difference between those two extremes, creating something some have called "ambient rock."

But I'm getting off track here. Let's talk about the album.

Harmonia is made up of the two guys from Cluster and one half of Neu!. Though I'm hardly an expert on krautrock, I can tell you that the bands in the genre seem to range from the tribal improv of Can to the austere, robotic Kraftwerk. As such, Musik Von Harmonia ends up somewhere in the middle between these two extremes. I'm not sure "ambient rock" is quite the right term, but the album does meet the criteria Brian Eno set out for the ambient style: you can listen to it either as sonic wallpaper that colors an environment, or you can focus on it and enjoy it just as equally.

The emphasis on the album is decidedly textural, with fascinating soundscapes produced by keyboards, synthesizers, electronic drums, and guitars all over the place. Though the majority of the songs tend toward a rhythm-less free floating air, some, like 'Dino' have the distinctive relentless beat of motorik that tips the hand of the Neu! third of the band. Elsewhere, 'Ahoi!' has a delicate air that sounds like something you might hear in a massage parlor (and was possibly influential on Eno's ambient albums); 'Ohrwurm' is all sinister synths and a guitar tortured until it sounds like a groaning violin; and album closer 'Hausmusik', with its ethereal music box piano lines that are submerged beneath a shimmering glacier of sound before the latter recedes as gradually as it came.

Not much more needs to be said about Musik Von Harmonia. If you have even the slightest interest in krautrock or ambient music in general, you'll find it a worthy addition to your collection.

Bukowski On Film: Barfly Vs. Factotum

There are certain authors who make for great film adaptations, and almost all the others make for miserable ones. The difference, as near as I can tell, is that authors who focus on plot as the primary strength of their writing adapt well to film, while authors who's main strength is their words and style make for bad films. This, then, is my main problem with Barfly and subsequently my love for Factotum.

Bukowski novels and short stories are never good for what happens. By this I mean, they're mostly about the same things--drunks, bums, sex, smoking, fighting, depression, filth, etc. It's a thousand times the same story, but the genius comes in how he tells them each time. Bukowski definitely falls into the less-is-more, use-plain-language school of writing--meaning that the brilliant lines he manages are all the more meaningful because they cut to the quick.

Barfly fails and Factotum succeeds on the basis of two things: what they focus on and what the characters are like. Barfly chooses to focus on a plot, following the main character Henry Chinaski, an alcoholic who fights to win money and occasionally writes. We see him come full circle, from having almost nothing to having slightly more by movie's end. His romance with Faye Dunaway's character feels artificial and conceited, and her fight with Alice Krige's character at the end is embarrassing. All the while, the movie completely fails to make us believe in or care about Chinaski because we so seldom get to hear Bukowski's words through him. We're told he's a great writer because Alice Krige tracks him down in order to give him money for publishing some of his work, but we're never shown that he's a great writer.

By contrast, Factotum has a plot that just kind of happens and feels natural. Events occur to move the action along, but there is no real journey or change for our hero, Chinaski. Instead, it's mainly about him trying to make money by working various odd jobs, gambling on horse races, and so forth. All the while, we glimpse him writing and drinking, and we're always hearing Bukowski's words, often spoken in voiceover by Matt Dillon, who wouldn't be my first choice for the role but actually does an admirable job of it.

Speaking of which, Mickey Rourke absolutely misses the mark in Barfly. His Bukowski is somewhere between a hunched over Russel Crowe and a less manic Rodney Dangerfield, a freak of nature more than an odd human being. Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway doesn't belong in this movie at all. She always sounds like she's just reading lines rather than inhabiting her character, and simply put, she's too pretty to seem believable. I never once for a second saw her character and not her. The other problem with Barfly is that it doesn't portray violence and alcoholism in a realistic way. The fights in the movie are bloody and meaningless because within minutes, the characters look fine. As for the drinking, it feels completely sanitized, and the characters drink like fishes while never once getting sick or looking worse for the wear.

Factotum, somehow, gets the two main characters right. Dillon's Bukowski is more patient and reserved, dignified even in his lowest moments. We see him in every aspect of his life, including a particularly funny and revealing scene where he must have his balls bandaged up so he can go to work. This time out, his main love interest is played by Lili Taylor, who you might know from Six Feet Under or High Fidelity. While she and Chinaski meet and re-meet during the course of the movie, you never get that sanitized 80s romance film feel that Barfly has because she seems real and, spoiler alert, Chinaski loses her in the end. I always saw her character and not "hey it's the crazy medicated ex-girlfriend from High Fidelity!!" Furthermore, the realism of the violence and drinking is far better in this movie. Though there are only one or two true moments of violence in it, they feel more "real" because of their awkwardness. As for the drinking, well, people who drink feel like shit and get sick, and Factotum has both.

In the end, there isn't much contest here. Barfly could be just about any movie by the time it's done, while Factotum is a much more fully realized adaptation. The fact that it ends with one of my favorite scenes from the novel, in which Chinaski and a bum are thrown out of a day labor agency for drinking, and follows it with a brilliant monologue while he drinks in a strip club, is all the sweeter.

Times New Viking Sound Like Shit

It's exceedingly rare for me to listen to an album and really, truly, want to love it but be unable to utterly adore it because it actively tries to make me not like it. But such is the situation I find myself in with Rip It Off by Times New Viking.

Almost everything you read about this band will say something along the lines of "beneath the lo-fi production, treble-y hiss, and red line distortion lie songs of startling melody and creativity." That's true, but it's often offered as a kind of excuse. The truth is, in 2008, signed to Matador, Times New Viking must have purposely chosen to release an album that sounds this bad. It reminds me of early Pavement as heard on the Westing (By Musket And Sextant) compilation: below average to miserable sound quality that still doesn't ruin the quality of the songs. The difference there is that it was Pavement's first few releases, and with their proper recording debut on Matador, their sound hadn't changed so much as it was refined to a keen edge and you could actually hear it.

On Rip It Off, loud, distorted guitars, thudding drums, and the occasional organ chunks grind their way to the top of the mix, trading space with barely audible vocals. On one hand, the sheer visceral sound of the album has me pumping my fist and shouting "indie rock finally has balls again!!" On the other hand, if the songs didn't sound like they were recorded on the monophonic cassette voice recorder I have in my closet somewhere, I would like it a lot more. Again, my assumption is that the band intentionally wanted the songs to sound so noisy and lo-fi, and I simply don't think it works. When the most shocking moment of your noise-y indie rock album is the part where the sound cleans up for the acoustic ending of 'End Of All Things', something is wrong with your aesthetic.

In the end, I give Times New Viking some grace points. I begrudgingly respect any band who release something that sounds so defiantly lo-fi and noisy in this day and age, not to mention with song titles like 'Times New Viking Vs. Yo La Tengo.' Maybe next time if they meet us halfway, and let us hear the great songs they have buried beneath all the crap, they'll truly have something worth praising.

Album of the Week: Low- Secret Name

I don't get minimalism. I mean, minimalism in visual arts. I'm admittedly not much for art art in general, but minimalism especially has always defied me to appreciate and/or understand it. Whenever I see minimalist art and read about it, I have the same thought: "I don't get it."

Oddly, then, I've never had a problem appreciating minimalism in almost every other arena of the arts. Especially music. I seem to have an odd predilection toward simple, repetitive, and stripped down music instead of ornate and multi-layered music. From Brian Eno's ambient albums to modern minimalist techno, I like almost all minimalist music I get my hands on. Low, obviously, is included.

It's easy to label Low as slowcore, but that misses the point. The slowness of their music isn't the defining aspect; after all, many post-rock and other fringe experimental bands play slow music. Really, Low are a minimalist rock band. Their music is slow, true, but it's also shot through with minimalism. Every guitar chord, bass note, drum beat, cymbal crash, and vocal line is exactly where the band wanted it to be, and is there for a very good reason.

Secret Name is my favorite Low album. I may as well just come out and say that, since it's going to be the only conclusion I come to each and every time I listen to it again. It will always stand as my version of what I think of as the ideal 'classic' Low sound, songs that are slow, hypnotic, beautiful, chilly and yet warm at the same time, intense, sad, and, of course, minimalist.

I think the problem most people make in listening to Low is that they force the band upon themselves. Of all the bands I love, Low is easily the one that I absolutely must listen to in the right mood and at the proper energy level or else I will hate them. Listening to Secret Name asks something more of the listener than most albums: that you are in the perfect state of mind and at the correct concentration level to give yourself over fully to it for its 52 minute duration. Listening to the album is like laying in the attic of an old farmhouse watching dust motes float in the sunshine, like taking a walk at night through a pine forest while the slow falls heavily around you, like whispering into the neck of your significant other when you're both too tired to have sex but unable to fall asleep...These times and moods come very rarely in life, and when they do, listening to Secret Name during them is just as sweet as the hyperactive, birthday party fun of Architecture in Helsinki's In Case We Die or the beer swillin', reptile brain throwdown of The Stooges' Funhouse.

So: Secret Name is an album you may only be in the mood to listen to a few times a year. But when you are, it'll be your short term favorite album ever.

Penny Arcade: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings

In personal terms, 2001 was probably the first year I realized how huge Penny Arcade had become. Keep in mind that this was a time when we were all still stuck on 56k modems--well, most of us anyway--and it often took anywhere from 5 seconds to a full half minute to view a PA strip. Anyway, strips seemed to be linked, referenced, and posted on message boards I frequented with growing regularity until at some point everybody stopped doing it. Because hey, we figured, we all read it anyway. And that seemingly eternal wait was always worth it.

Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings is the second Penny Arcade collection. It contains every strip posted in 2001, a time when the comic's Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule was set in stone. In addition to that, Epic Legends includes an introduction by J. Allard (of Microsoft), an introduction by Tycho, commentary on every strip as well as select blogposts by Tycho, 34 full color pages of illustrations from the Penny Arcade card game, and a section of various projects/side projects that Gabe and Tycho worked on over the years. For sheer volume, Epic Legends is the best bang-for-your-buck of all the PA collections.

Going only by gaming terms, 2001 was something of a watershed year for the industry. The Dreamcast and PS2 were out, with the former reaching its peak and the latter slowly building momentum toward the world crushing juggernaut it would become. At the same time, the year saw the launch of a full three platforms: the Gameboy Advance, the original Xbox, and the Gamecube. With all this material to work with, and the usual assorted rumbles on the PC and tech sides, you can be sure that 2001 was also a very good year for Penny Arcade. Though every time I flip through each of the collections (or go through a given year via the online archives on their website) I end up thinking it's my favorite year or has the most of my favorite strips, I would definitely rank 2001 as being one of the top years. That's not to say that the other years are necessarily bad or worse for it, but in my mind I think of 2001 as the first time the full breadth and depth of what Jerry (Tycho) and Mike (Gabe) could do with Penny Arcade was first fully shown.

You really can't go wrong with Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings if you're any kind of fan. Not only are the strips themselves great, but Jerry's commentary on each is almost always hilarious. That's to say nothing of the handful of concurrent blogposts from that era, which--if you've never bothered to read his more modern posts on the website nowadays--demonstrate what a brilliant and memorable writer he is. Of course I also have nothing but nice things to say about Mike's art, something you also get a full taste of with the full color card game artwork section.

To put it succinctly: go buy this.

Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots!

I think it's safe to say that Penny Arcade is the most popular and successful webcomic, and has been for some time. We've become so used to the fact that they've always been there, ready to satirize, decry, rage against, and lampoon videogames, and other assorted nerd-ity, that it's hard to remember a time when Penny Arcade wasn't always around, least of all not being on top of the world.

The first collection of PA strips--like all the others, it bears a title and cover that has nothing to do with the contents--let's us go back to this bygone era, when Gabe and Tycho were brand new. Attack of the Bacon Robots! contains every strip from the very first (November 18, 1998, for those playing along at home) til the end of 2000. While this may seem like a lot of content, a full two years of Penny Arcade strips, the webcomic didn't achieve its now immovable Monday/Wednesday/Friday update schedule until most of the way through 2000, so you're effectively getting as many comics as you do in the other three collections that have been released.

The main question is, why would you pay $13 for this, when the comics are still available for free online?? Well, there's the "support your heroes" argument. I've read Penny Arcade, more or less, since the beginning, and until I bought these collections, I hadn't given them a cent of my money. Another argument in their favor is ease of use. The sad truth is that Penny Arcade's archive is woefully inadequate and prone to error, frequently sending me to wrong strips or sending me to the same one over and over. Then there's the fact that it's just convenient to have the strips in book form. They look nice in print form, plus the extras you can't get anywhere else.

Speaking of which...Along with the aforementioned two years of Penny Arcade, you get an introduction written by Bill Amend (of Foxtrot fame), two introductions by Jerry Holkins (a.k.a. Tycho) as well as commentary on every strip from him, a sketchbook of Mike Krahulik's (a.k.a. Gabe) from those years, and a webcomic's manifesto written by Jerry. The second volume of the Penny Arcade collections easily has the most and best extras, but they're really just bonuses anyway. If you aren't buying these expressly for the strips, then there's something wrong with you.

The main critical thing I can say about the strips themselves is that they aren't nearly as archaic and awkward as you might fear. Assuming you haven't gone back through the first two years of strips lately, you'll be shocked to see how far Penny Arcade has come both in terms of artwork and writing. Mike has come quite a ways in his drawing, perfecting a unique style with slight alterations made over time. About halfway through the book you'll start to "see" the Penny Arcade you know and love. As for Jerry, well, his writing is the not-so-secret weapon of Penny Arcade. You don't get the full bloom of his writing until later volumes, which re-print classic blogposts from him, but his commentary on each comic is genius and, sometimes, funnier than the strips themselves. That said, Penny Arcade--as a whole--was never really bad per se. Some of the strips from '98/'99 are clunky and embarrassing, but you'll likely be shocked at how well most of it holds up.

As a critic I want to fall into the lazy and evil (lazevil??) trap of referring to a certain year as "the best" or "the year where it all finally came together", but unlike many webcomics that look and read like crap until a year or two in, Penny Arcade was already in its prime by mid-1999. The tone and style have remained largely unchanged even as the comics have, perhaps, become more refined--that is to say, they look and read better. Anyway, if you're a fan, you owe it to yourself--and to Jerry and Mike--to pick this up.