Andrew Broder crafted
10th Avenue Freakout as a rhythmic, up-front
electronic-
pop album, much less pensive and subdued than
Fog's previous full-length,
Ether Teeth. His impeccable sense of
pop spontaneity -- tremendous hooks sprinkled in among intense, droning atmospherics and lucid, loosely built drum machine lines -- is still very present, albeit far more out in the open and crisply produced, allowing for more standard songcraft and much less downtime.
Broder's twisted and often absurd lyrics, such as "
Jesus Christ is my
American Idol/He's the brand new funky president" from the catchy
"We're Winning," are equally balanced by his moments of inspired illustration.
"Hummer," for example, creates a bleak, bittersweet feeling of numbed malaise, which
Broder establishes very effectively, harmonizing with himself as he ponders, in a positively unaffected daze, what it's like "to be a sprinkler system in a thunderstorm."
Fog is essentially
Andrew Broder's moniker, under which he pursues various projects, all considerably different but, like
10th Avenue Freakout, consistently imaginative and never predictable. ~ Ben Peterson
