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.