The Fiery Furnaces have always been difficult. Anyone who heard last year’s Blueberry Boat came out of the experienced either confused or converted, and even today it’s an album that’s much easier to respect and admire than to love. If anything, this year’s Rehearsing My Choir seems even more obtuse, better as a form of musical historiography than as pop music. If anyone’s still sitting on the fence about the Furnaces, though—maybe one of those people who respect the band but can’t seem to love them—you might like to know that it hasn’t always been a struggle to enjoy them.

When it came out, Gallowsbird’s Bark received a mere fraction of the attention its sucessor did. Even back in 2003, the Fiery Furnaces were writing and performing some complex songs, but compared to the songwriting acrobatics of Blueberry Boat the songs on Gallowsbird’s Bark were positively simple-minded. Not quite overloaded with ideas for two-minute song fragments, the brother-sister duo of Eleanor and Matt Friedberger were able to stick to just one or two big ideas per song. The result is a much more immediately likeable album, even if it doesn’t quite reward repeated listening like its bigger brother. The middle section of Gallowsbird’s Bark, anchored at either end by “Inca Rag/Name Game” and “Crystal Clear,” is a spectacular run; a little noodling here, a bunch of fun choruses there, and a dash of mid-song structure shifts everywhere. Yes, it’s Fiery Furnaces-lite. But some of us prefer a little easy listening in our diet, and Gallowsbird’s Bark is perfect for those times when you don’t need or want the full-blown complexity of the Furnaces’ later work.