Oooh, this ties with the Warp comp for being my fave today. Apparently FB got bored with doing house so they decided to go insane with a couple of guitars and a load of samplers and then release the bugger. Which is exactly what I want more bands to be doing. This is where today’s happening guitar beat combos usually fail so boringly. Look at bloody Kenickie – now they’ve come back as Steps. Next week they’ll probably lob some baggy skate trousers on and declare they’ve always had a hip hop element to their music.

Whereas…
FB astound me track after track. The closest mainstream CD this sounds like (and it doesn’t) is perhaps Air, at a loooong stretch. Really, to describe it more accurately, you have to imagine disturbed members of Swell Maps or Modern English locked up in a room with Lalo Schifrin and William Shatner. Really. Honestly. It’s like This Mortal Coil discovering the funk in a very small purple box that their goth kitten had shat on. FB’s use of guitar is at once familiar and totally disconcerting. This is Brechtian pop music (just as I wibbled on once that The Day Today was Brechtian comedy for much the same reasons).

Now if FB heard me saying all that, they’d probably call me a fat cunt and poke me in the eyes. But I don’t care:I like this album that much. For entirely different reasons, it excites me as much as the first time I heard Penthouse & Pavement, Criminal Minded or Tigermilk. I’ve listened to it twice since I bought it today and I’m now gonna ration myself so I don’t prematurely wear it out.