Fievel Is Glauque – Rong Weicknes


Fievel Is Glauque‘s 2023 song “I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See” can tell you a lot about the eclectic, progressive pop duo. Written and recorded in a single day, and released in what’s essentially demo form, it has a raw and unpolished quality, fuzzy in fidelity and relatively sparse. It comes and goes in just two and a half minutes, but it contains worlds of possibilities therein, built on a sophisticated and ornate melodic construction with Zach Phillips’ instrumental flourishes providing far more detail and intricacy than most of us are used to hearing on a home demo. All the while, Belgian-born singer Ma Clément mirrors the song’s impromptu arrival and nearly-as-sudden departure in her narration: “First there was a lighted cigarette/The cherry glowed and was gone/Into a space beyond/I’ve seen so many things just vanish.”
“I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See” also appears on the duo’s new album and first to be released via Fat Possum, Rong Weicknes, only slightly longer but more fleshed out instrumentally, featuring live drums, horns and a more polished production, including a richer layer of effects behind Clément’s vocals, as if she herself were phasing into the “space beyond” that she references. It’s a bigger and brighter recording, but it’s still recognizably the same song that they spontaneously dropped over a year ago—an essentially finished masterpiece of intricately crafted lounge pop in unvarnished, perfectly unadorned form.
Rong Weicknes, the second album from Fievel is Glauque, finds the Brooklyn duo taking their baroque-yet-immediate approach to songcraft to newly maximalist heights. Much as they did with “Scanning,” Phillips and Clément began with a foundation of just the duo, building out from there with additional improvisational elements, and ultimately a full band that prove themselves as jazz-pop-fusion ringers: guitarist Thom Gill, bassist Logan Kane, percussionist Daniel Rossi, saxaphonist and flautist André Sacalxot, drummer Gaspard Sicx and guitarist Chris Weisman. Somehow impossibly, even miraculously, these songs retain a breeziness and effortlessness in spite of the labyrinthine structures that hold them together.
Fievel Is Glauque never lose sight of pop immediacy even at their most progressive, and vice versa. A standout moment like first single “As Above So Below” is still a composition built on pop appeal and bright, magnetic melodies, however dizzying its detours and dense its layers. But the fluffy flourishes of flutes and jazzy arrangement nonetheless carry a warmth that, not so much a cold product of studio perfection as a group of incredible musicians engaged in joyful chemistry. Similar can be said for the relatively low-key “Love Weapon,” whose playful polyester groove leaves ample canvas for individual flourishes of guitar and piano, and an unexpected funk-rock climax carried home by Sacalxot’s saxophone solo.
The elements that Fievel Is Glauque intertwine might at time seem incongruous on paper, some of their wildest moments evoking Stereolab after a Magma binge or the Mahavishnu Orchestra playing the yé-yé hits. But it’s ultimately the strength of their songwriting that holds everything together, a core of melody that’s solid yet flexible enough to allow everyone involved the freedom to take flight without losing their landing gear. But they’re also not averse to simply scaling back and letting a comparatively simple song speak for itself, as with the gorgeous “Toute Suite.” But it’s in moments like “It’s So Easy,” its title something like a dare to those who might attempt to replicate it, where each gorgeously captured individual piece only enhances all the others. Phillips and Clément could have just as easily taken the route of their early version of “I’m Scanning Things I Can’t See” and released a version of Rong Weicknes that dialed back on the production flourishes, the improvisation, the saxophones, flutes and funk bass—but what would be the fun of that?
Label: Fat Possum
Year: 2024
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Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.