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Review: 'Frogbelly & Symphony'
'Blue Bright Ow Sleep'   

-  Album: 'Blue Bright Ow Sleep' -  Label: 'Labelship Records'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '13th April 2015'

Our Rating:
Unexpected is the word. Bewildering is perhaps another. No, not random phrases bubbling from my overtaxed mind, but the ones that present themselves amidst a froth of consternation while listening to this effort by Frogbelly & Symphony (a truly awful name of ever was one, which makes me think of Paul McCartney and Rupert the Bear).

Leaping unpredictably and seemingly without rhyme or reason between noodly math-tinged indie to chunky rock riffage and theatrical drama conventionally reserved for stage productions. Americana, country, prog and psychedelia aren’t so much blended and cut up and pasted side by side and on top of one another.

The interchanging singers Tom and Liz Hanley flick from being demure, almost twee, to spitting bile in a most schizophrenic fashion. A few bars of folk are dashed on the rocks and swept to sea in a rising tide of strings. Nifty basslines begin to nag and gnaw but no sooner are you in the groove than the groove’s gone, replaced by something entirely different. Lyrically, they’re equally unpredictable.

None of the album’s 10 songs end where they begin, and obvious choruses are abandoned after a single iteration. The Britpop ballad ‘Before I Die’ is by far the most conventional track on the album, and the piano-led contemplation also features a guitar break that comes on like J Mascis. It’s followed, of course, by a discordant stomp in the form of ‘Patch of Blue’ and there are no two ways about it: it’s impossible to pin these guys down. From the quirky indie tune and wordplaying title (‘Cola in Mongolia’) to the towering miniature epic (‘Leya’s Find’) via deft chamber pop (‘Shingle’), ‘ Blue Bright Ow Sleep’ is built upon endless incongruities.

I’m not in the habit of sitting on the fence, and I appreciate that a music reviewer’s job involves the formation and expression of opinions (objective or otherwise). But I really can’t be certain if this is a work of genius or if there’s simply too much going on to work.

Frogbelly & Symphony Online
  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Frogbelly & Symphony - Blue Bright Ow Sleep