Fibs

FIBS is an album that shows Anna Meredith is excelling at what she does best – creating forward-thinking, engaging music that isn’t replicated elsewhere.

FIBS is a wild, breathtaking ride full of stunning musical dexterity. And that's no lie.

Fibs is brimming with contrary combinations, irreverent genre-bending and serious innovation.

Fibs is thrilling because it doesn’t adhere to the usual. A freewheeling, freethinking treat for the senses which reveals a musician at the height of her powers.

FIBS takes listeners for a ride, so to speak, along the meticulously plotted rhythms of its very physical, narrative-free presentation, one that, in Meredith's hands, is both stimulating and engaging.

With its huge, graceful scope, FIBS smirks slyly at any presumptions or hopes listeners may harbour. These fibs are alive – a thriving, amoebic album consuming the petri dish in which it was formed.

It’s a frankly overwhelming listen first time around, with everything tearing along at a hundred miles an hour, but it’s all fizzing and crackling so exhilaratingly that you’re happy to let her sweep you along.

She’s the type of restless innovator that doesn’t stick with the same style for too long, and FIBS is a joyful, energetic follow-up to her debut. [Nov 2019, p.56]

FIBS revels in toying with expectations and uncovers more wonders with every listen.

Yet though FIBS skips swiftly between moods and sounds, Meredith’s innate ability to bring these parts together into a collection that’s both bursting with compositional creativity, while still maintaining its own sense of cohesion and an accessible edge, inspires awe. It’s no lie: Meredith has struck gold once again.

Chaotic uncertainty is the reality Meredith repeatedly presents on FIBS, both emotionally and through musical structure. It is the work’s deeper raison d’être, even when the individual pieces seem digestible, pretty, or even safe.

Those who go into this expecting more of the visceral and mind-bending productions that added to the novelty of Varmints might be disappointed, but listeners with no expectations are bound to be pleasantly surprised.

Like its predecessor, FIBS is a stubbornly uncategorisable hybrid of styles, tempos and angles on the traditional "song." [Dec 2019, p.30]

The songwriting on FIBS is just as experimental as the arrangements, at least on the album’s first two-thirds. ... f there’s a dip in momentum, it starts at FIBS’s most conventional song, “Limpet,” which follows a more typical guitar-rock arrangement. Downtempo tracks like “Ribbons” and “Unfurl” also suffer in comparison to the album’s richer, bolder experiments.

FIBS highlights Meredith as a much-needed creative force. Her shape-shifting genre-defiance constantly surprises and intrigues, but it’s good to get back down to Earth afterwards.

Meredith's precision helps control the fun, but this is another buoyant invention from her musical lab. [Dec 2019, p.95]