Foxygen, the bi-coastal duo of Olympia Washington's Sam France and N.Y.C.'s
Jonathan Rado, don't make songs in the traditional sense as much as they mash every possible sonic reference point into schizophrenic micro-albums, cramming so many constantly changing sounds into their compositions, the songs threaten to overwhelm themselves. "Abandon My Toys," the six-minute opus that kicks off the group's first widely available release,
Take the Kids Off Broadway, merges raw and wistful interpretations of '60s rock influences like
the Kinks and
Loaded-era
Velvet Underground with some of the kitchen-sink freak folk of early
Beck albums. Without ever repeating a chorus or verse, the song somehow keeps a plot that connects with the listener. "Abandon My Toys" has a hard time sitting still, but it's just a pace-setting first look into the album's frantic world of sound. "Make It Known" filters every era of
Rolling Stones into a compact space, interjecting short, blasting horn sections and ending abruptly in a swell of electronics. The title track channels
Bowie's glammy moments for a verse or two before making a series of sharp left turns into faux-girl group, blue-eyed soul, and back again. Much like the short-lived genius of
the Unicorns,
Foxygen's songs are bedroom symphonies, chock-full of precisely placed shifts so deliberate and chaotically orchestrated they risk sounding like alienating gibberish. The ten-minute plus "Teenage Alien Blues" runs an exhausting gambit of
Suicide-esque vocal shouts to
Jagger-meets-
Reed snippets, borrowing melodies directly from each frontman's respective band before wandering into an inexplicably fuzzed-out bass section for a few seconds before moving on.
Take the Kids Off Broadway is without a doubt a seemingly impenetrable beast, and it takes a moment to build up a filter from its ceaseless shifts and non-stop references to isolated moments from the history of classic rock. Despite its dense and initially off-putting nature, the seven songs become more than collages of favorite moments from the duo's record collections. Music this overbearingly organized and stuffed with spirit is no small feat, and repeat listens flatten out some of the insanity to reveal well-constructed if intentionally overwrought pop gems. Much like
Of Montreal's self-analytical constant key-changing, or
Olivia Tremor Control's homespun masterpieces,
Foxygen has made something that reaches out for so many possibilities it ends up reverting inward, ultimately sounding insular, like a highway of endlessly firing synapses in someone elses' brain. ~ Fred Thomas