Customer Reviews

Lovelyville

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just bought this cd, and it's absolutely fascinating. A longish (22 tracks), sprawling mix of avant-garde indie/post-rock that never ceases to impress, this album is one of the best records to have been recorded in the past 10 years. Although nobody quite sounds like them, the Thinking Fellers draw influences from abstract german legends such as Faust and Can, and post-punk edginess and Captain Beefheart-like wordplay and segmented songs (including some influence on his Trout Mask-era guitar interplay). They're a great band that never stops being interesting, and they're full of quirkiness and humor as well as some very inventive and brilliant music with a varying production sound that goes from lo-fi 4 track fiddlings to a fuller but somewhat edgy and slightly underproduced sound. Although I've heard and read about them for a long time, I finally bought one of their albums and no band has excited me as much as this band in a long time. I highly recommend if you're into post-punk bands or you're into the askew and quirky. I also highly recommend their "Strangers of the Universe" (which I might actually point someone towards first due to the fact that it is a more accessible introduction for someone who needs to be worked into a weird band) and "Mother of All Saints." A great band, and somewhat underrated at times, Thinking Fellers are one of the greatest bands of today.

Here's the deal": either you know and love Roky Erickson and Captian Beefheart or you don't. Contemporaries of this band might be Sun City Girls and Three Day Stubble.
If you don't want to like this band please don't try. It doesn't make sense and it never will and that's why it rules the earth in so many ways. There are a few different methods of catching this, jazz people - have you ever heard Ak Sak Ma Boul? Sun Ra? It's not really too out of the meter if you consider who came before. I was very fortunate to have seen some of the TFUL282 shows in SF CA in the nineties. They could play the balls off a yak. I give 5 stars because their music helped me win through some very tough times, and I am a better person for having participated in the fray. Thank you and goodnight.

This is a deeply strange album. It is deliberately discordant and sour much of the time, but that is what makes it special. The songs may sound noisy but they are structured and well thought out.

If you are new to Thinking Fellers Union, I would recommend getting Strangers from the Universe, not this album. If, however, you like the band and are ready to listen to some of their more challenging music, you will find plenty to think about here.