Some American

Quick Hit: Fol Chen - Part II: The New December

This week I picked up Fol Chen’s latest release, Part II: The New December, which was released earlier this month. Full disclosure here, I owe my interest in this album to Bob Boilen over at NPR, who included the album’s second track “In Ruins” as a part of All Songs Considered’s Summer LIstening show.

If you are a fan of the sound typified by bands like Dirty Projectors, then I think you will find Fol Chen’s sound very much to your liking, if a bit on the simplistic side. There is a glitchy vibrance to Part II that will mentally transport even the most dour of listeners, kick and scream all they might, to beach scene, albeit a somewhat darkened one. I’ve read several places that this album continues a story arc that was introduced on the band’s first full length, though as with all concepts of this type I had a difficult time discerning the exact features of the disillusioned world of the central character, John Shade. Maybe I just wasn’t listening hard enough?

Whether or not the concept is executed with clarity, I certainly enjoyed the method of it’s conveyance. Fol Chen’s music is disarming and joyous, a sort of mainstreamification of what the chip tune scene has been doing for years now. Production wise, this album are above reproach and, somewhat incongruously, is a bright listen that demands headphones to be truly appreciated.

I will temper my above thoughts by saying that there are a few moments on the album that come to close to being purely pop for my taste, the track “C/U” being a particular example. I don’t mind pop creeping into my ears every once in a while, but unless it cranks it to 15 in the way a band like Junior Senior does, it rarely works for me.

Part II: The New December was released July 6 on Asthmatic Kitty.