The Fiery Furnaces - 'EP' (Rough Trade) Released 11/01/05

'EP’ bursts with the schizophrenic charm of The Mothers of Invention singing ‘Come Fly With Me’. A subtle, but severely unsettling electro-pop haemorrhage.

Scorching new single ‘Here Comes the Summer’ is the sound of Nina Persson and Kim Deal walking hand in hand through a thousand electrowhite butterflies, while ‘Evergreen’ is the soundtrack to a thousand trendy Camden blowjobs. Then it gets gloriously weird, the crack-pop lollypop bounciness of ‘Tropical Ice-land’ proving a work of such ****ed-in-the-head lunacy that every last bar of it deserves a knighthood.

While the Casio-kitsch brain torture of ‘Smelling Cigarettes’ barks with an errant fizz that’d give The Research a collective aneurism. Couple all this with ‘Duffer St George’ darting more frenetically than a squirrel crossing the M25 and remind yourself that this is the Friedbergers with theirsensible pop hats on. After all this 'Zappa does Sinatra' sounds a bit dull... but frankly, its genius.