Buzzin Music

Fol Chen – No Wedding Cake – single review

On the website of their label, Asthmatic Kitty, Fol Chen write:

“You know that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Presence” album?  Fol Chen sound like that”

It’s hard to know what to take from this. Personally I doubt that Fol Chen’s carefree dancey music is exactly what Led Zeppelin’s sleeve designer was thinking of on that cover. But, like that dark object, Fol Chen do explore an element of the unknown whilst using the ordinary.

Fol Chen were born out of the ashes of Liars, the rockers who had lots of success with their last shoegazing eponymous album. But Fol Chen take their sound much more towards the avant-garde side of things.

Their songs seem to come out of nowhere; seem to inhabit a world of their own – yet if you break down their compositions, there’s little that’s remarkably original in the mix.

On No Wedding Cake, the new single, there are the same muffled drums that I’m sure I heard on the Dodos’ record, an electric-organ that Hot Chip must have used at some point, and funky clean guitars that definitely sound like Room Of Fire era Strokes.

Yet No Wedding Cake is an original, catchy, pop-funk-electro song that would be at home in an 80s disco, among the 90s pop scene (note the key change at 1.36!), or among their disco revivalist contemporaries in the present day.

Don’t become complacent, though, that you have sussed out Fol Chen from No Wedding Cake alone, though. The whole album ‘Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made’, due out in February and which I’ll post on in due course, is even more a mish-mash of sounds and surprises.

“We are cryptic and joyful and we would like you to dance”, Fol Chen write, and that’s about all we can hope to expect to garner from talking about them.

No Wedding Cake is out now on Asthmatic Kitty (the label started by Sufjan Stevens) and is worth a listen if you’re into Hot Chip or Junior Boys or general avant-garde disco music.