I should preface this by stating that I have quite a wide range of musical taste, from singer/songwriter, to heavy post metal. Basically spanning from Bright Eyes to Mastodon if that helps put it into perspective. So let’s just jump right into it, I love progressive jazz, math rock, jazz fusion, experimental, instrumental diddlyfuck…. whatever all that shit is, I eat it up.



So naturally Father Figure came along and produced one of the most jammin’ and kick ass albums to ever be pumped into my ear holes. I honestly do not have any recollection of how I discovered this band, even more so I have no recollection of life before this album. Seldom has a band been able to completely shift my outlook on all other bands. After listening to this album once I’d already concluded that these four jokers from New York were among the ranks of some of the most intelligent people I’ve never met (a high status list featuring Stephen Hawking, Nikola Tesla, Richard Feynman, and now the members of Father Figure).

Yearning for Slime kicks off this album with a wriggling bass line, setting up an album full of weird ass time signatures and incredible guitar riffs that combine a seemingly perfect ratio of assonance to dissonance. The song continues to an amazing build up that shreds so hard and so beautifully it makes you want to punch your sister in the nose.



Then it’s all over, but all of the sudden a silky drum beat echoes in. It’s the start of Club Sauce and it’s about to take a 2 minute 40 second musical dump on your face. Noodley guitars and a jazzy smooth Wurlizter smack you out of nowhere taking so many twists and turns making you question whether or not you should give up on playing instruments every step of the way.

Club Sauce closes out in fit fashion and Arithmetickle slides in and calms the mood. It sounds peaceful… for all but roughly 30 seconds then breaks out into a crunchy slick jam and sweet mathy riffs that makes you wanna call your friends things like “turkeys” and “jabronis” because they probably haven’t heard this song yet. I cannot specifically select a favorite song off this album as there are different things that I love about each one. However, among the friends that I have shown this band to they all agree that Arithmetickle is their favorite.

What are all these creepy noises? Oh, it’s just the intro.

Wait the intro is in the middle of the album? Weird.

Moving on, Suns sets in slowly with a horn softly in the distance to greet you into this amazing journey of a song. This song sounds dark, in an awesome “this song is badass as hell, I’m going to drive around blasting this shit with ALL my windows down” kind of way. I like this song.

First Pube Theme Song was actually the first song that I heard and it holds a special place in my heart. It has a wonderful internal contrast between a soft beginning and a brutal ending. If you showed your grandmother the end of this song, she would tell you she’d never heard a song that kicks so much ass before. It’s a pretty crazy jam. It’s like eating molten hot SpaghettiO’s, it’s gonna burn your tongue, but holy shit does it taste good.

Splitting Euphoria is another journey of a song, it’s chock full of up and down moments. So much so that I expected Kevin Spacey to start talking at the end of the song to tell me how beautiful life really is. This song was gorgeously composed and thoughtfully designed, always revealing the perfectionist nature of these artists.

Lastly Echoing Truth starts slowly and with a dark demeanor. This song is practically one giant build up into indistinguishable guitar crunch and lingering squeeks. But that description doesn’t give the finish of this album enough credit. It’s a cleverly crafted final piece that just makes you want to start the whole album over again.

What more can I say about Congratulations on your Loss, it’s a modern masterpiece. The time and effort that goes into constructing music such as this is mind boggling. Hats off to Father Figure for an enlightening release and I cannot wait until their next. Get this album.

OH YEAH. IT’S FUCKING FREE.

http://fatherfigure.bandcamp.com/



You have no excuses