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The band take their experimental ethos even further without sacrificing the emotional power of their debut.
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It’s both an oddly comforting and exhilarating trip.
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There’s just so much going on throughout that you can’t stop listening.
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In the end, that's the best gift the Furnaces have to offer, the simple power of their own joyful racket and clatter, the pure holy hell they always seem to raise.
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The Friedbergers have made a cogent statement that leaves most other contemporary acts in the dust.
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The exuberant overload of Blueberry Boat will thrill and transport you with the ineluctable force of a great children's story, one whose execution matches its imagination.
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The album is a bit daunting and demanding. But it's also compelling and rewarding. [22 Aug 2004]
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The Fiery Furnaces have made one of the most ambitious and, quite likely, one of the best records of 2004.
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At times, Blueberry Boat sounds like it was made entirely out of the noodly bits that most other bands would junk for being too weird and difficult, but the Fiery Furnaces forge them into an album that's both more pop and more radical than Gallowsbird's Bark.
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Listening to 'Blueberry Boat' is a little like careening around an enormous multicoloured funfair - joyous, unpredictable, kaleidoscopic, tacky, and at times scary and sinister, sometimes all in the space of one song. But even if it occasionally makes you sick, it’s a thrilling ride nonetheless.
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While it may not be the orgiastic smorgasbord of pop delicacies The Fiery Furnaces aimed for, it's nonetheless one of the most ambitious pop albums released this year.
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Length is where the album fails.
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Honestly, there is no precedent for this album.
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"Blueberry Boat" will confuse first-timers with its cartoonish feel, but repeated listens start to reveal the subtle complexities that each song brings to the table, regardless of their seemingly short attention spans.
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Although the early part of Blueberry Boat is disjointed and difficult to absorb the album is still a triumph.
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This is a big, sprawling, difficult but rewarding album, from a band whose reach exceeds its grasp, but only by a little.
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In the end, this suite of suites sounds too inherently disorienting, however thrilling its fragments, and however entertaining it is to hear the Friedbergers' wordy, fantastical non sequiturs.
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It's deeply ambitious, but to listen to it you'd think making music like this was as easy for them as falling off a log. [18 Jul 2004]
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Under The RadarThis is pop music, filtered through the minds, hands and voices of two artists whose vision reaches beyond the bounds of the form. [#7]
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MojoIf you can stick with its synthetic marionette oompah band designs, become immersed in its whirlwind momentum and flint-eyed wit, the chances are you'll fall in love with the album's deep miined reservoirs of charm and sheer eagerness to impress. [Sep 2004, p.90]
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Q MagazineDespite the rollercoaster ride, there are intense moments of pop wonder and cartoon hilarity. [Sep 2004, p.120]
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Entertainment WeeklyIt's always urgent, heartfelt, fearlessly fiery, utterly sincere. [30 Jul 2004, p.70]
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Their inventive, experimental-leaning music dances through history, passing from blues to rock 'n' roll to pop to experimental to something uniquely theirs.
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MagnetOnly the rambunctious can appreciate the tinny, relentlessly inventive hybridization herein. [#64, p.92]
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The WireVery rewarding, although Blueberry Boat is perhaps too heavy a tome, lyrically, to be quite the right starting place for those new to the group. [#249, p.55]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 62 out of 74
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Mixed: 5 out of 74
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Negative: 7 out of 74
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Jul 22, 2011
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DavidVJul 21, 2007
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CameronWDec 9, 2005