Bomb in a Birdcage - A Fine Frenzy

Sep 01, 2009 11:09 am

With a Tori Amos mane of tomato-red hair, a gauzy voice made to deliver her bookish lyrics and more than 1 million followers on Twitter, A Fine Frenzy leader Alison Sudol is ready for her close-up.

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