A Fine Frenzy Albums (2)
What The Critics Say
What a difference two years can make. Alison Sudol introduced herself as a piano-playing pixie on 2007's One Cell in the Sea, stuffing her debut album with lilting vocals and fairy tale whimsy. While that combination spawned several upbeat songs, ballads proved to be Sudol's bread and butter, and she soon found herself saddled with the unfortunate task of re-creating the album's intimacy in a live concert setting. Two years after Sea's release, the songwriter returns with a second record, having taken a lesson from the road and fine-tuned her music accordingly. There are still several ballads here, particularly during the album's latter half, but Sudol knows that faster material works better in concert, where both the band and the audience can share in the same catharsis. Accordingly, Bomb in the Birdcage is a lively piece of work, with songs that take flight and arrangements that couch her vocals in tasteful heaps of strings, harmonies, and piano. A Fine Frenzy truly sounds like a band here, with guitarist David Levita leading the group on several numbers and drummer Jesse Siebenberg adding percussive nuance to one of the album's best tunes, "New Heights." Elsewhere, "What I Wouldn't Do" mixes acoustic guitar and handclaps into a summery folk song, the sort of sprightly thing that's appropriate for coffeehouses and campfires alike, while "Electric Twist" flirts with the Bird and the Bee's cool, nuanced electro-pop. Sudol sounds ecstatic throughout the album, her cooing voice often giving way to delighted yelps, and Bomb in the Birdcage is a fitting display of the explosives this songbird now has in her arsenal. ~ Andrew Leahey, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
After a relative dearth of female singer/songwriters (this was, of course, following the outpouring of them during the late-'90s Lilith Fair craze), women started making their way back into the limelight during the early 21st century. Artists like Michelle Branch and KT Tunstall -- even Avril Lavigne and Ashlee Simpson -- found success with their clean, sentimental poppy songs, and young Alison Sudol follows in this direction, even if she claims to have been influenced by Radiohead and Sigur Rós rather than Sarah McLachlan or Paula Cole. The truth is, Sudol, who chooses to go by the name A Fine Frenzy here, is much closer to the adult alternative sounds of radio-friendly rock than anything bordering on experimental. A self-taught pianist, she makes her way through the 14 songs on her debut, One Cell in the Sea, with a kind of laboriousness that distracts from her sweet soprano and tales of love and friendship. Sudol is a decent lyricist -- her main weakness is that she tries much too hard to be profound or interesting -- but her heavily affected piano, guitars, and strings force a kind of poignancy into the songs that hurts any kind of actual power they originally had (the last track on the record, "Borrowed Time," which employs an acoustic guitar instead, displays Sudol's voice and songwriting abilities infinitely better). But worst of all, and probably what makes all this stand out so much, is that the songs on One Cell in the Sea are not distinct, with melodies that go nowhere and choruses that blend into one another. The whole thing is an hour-long exercise in arpeggios and natural imagery ("I know that we're different/But we were one cell in the sea in the beginning.../We're not that different after all," Sudol coos in "The Minnow and the Trout"), hanging on for too long to Coldplay-esque rises and falls that do nothing, never capture the emotion that Chris Martin harnesses. She certainly tries hard, and nothing ever comes out awfully, but she never takes off, never does anything truly memorable, and so despite her attempts, A Fine Frenzy ends up being unremarkably dull. ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide
