[review 2004: the disappointments]

Already I can tell you this album will end up on quite a few end-of-year lists, split roughly evenly between best-ofs and worst-ofs. Blueberry Boat is literally all over the musical map; never have I heard an album so disjointed, so filled with tangents, so schizophrenic. It�s an album that demands a lot of work from the listener, which is why I can’t exactly write it off. I don�t think I�m going to see the light on Blueberry Boat anytime soon, but too much is going on here for me to just dismiss the album as a substandard piece of work.

The Fiery Furnaces seem to work best one song at a time, in more palatable doses. Thus “Quay Cur,” even though it�s nine minutes long, seems like one of the better songs on the album, as do “Straight Street” and “Chris Michaels.” But do I think they�re better than the other songs on the album because they really are superior, or is it just because I�ve listened to those songs in isolation more than the rest of the album? I suspect it�s the latter. And so I shelve the album, perhaps to be filed under Albums I�d Like More If I Were An Anal-Retentive Prick About Liking Important Albums. I don’t know if it’s an album I’ll ever get to like, hence the dubious distinction of being a disappointment. I suppose it�s a good thing I never went to see the band in concert; the problem of sensory overload is compounded live, with the whole set essentially sounding like a fifty-minute-long song built from the wreckage of fifteen albums.