November 2005 Rehearsal

I don't understand how fans of bands like Furdidurke exist. Like, I definitely don't hate this. I would listen to Furdidurke before a lot of other bands, in the grand scheme of things. But I sincerely don't understand what kind of person it takes to listen to this, and instantly become enraptured by Furdidurke, and declare Furdidurke to be their favorite band, and go around saying "FUCK YEAH FURDIDURKE", and yeah I'm just looking for excuses to keep saying "Furdidurke" at this point. Truth be told, the only Furdidurke release I've heard that thoroughly impressed me was Native, and that's just three songs out of a discography that seems practically unending at times. Everything else seems to be, well, this: capable of generating an interesting vibe at times, but rather boring beyond that.

Furdidurke songs are pretty easy to condense into a formula: take some dense, vaguely melancholy chords, alternate those with some more twangy, post-punky riffs, throw some D-beats on top of them, and then never record the resulting composition outside of a rehearsal session (because that makes it more real and authentic, or something along those lines). The band seem to put a lot of thought into the chords and textures used in their music, and the end result is pretty unique (angular and dissonant, but with tinges of melody constantly attempting to break through), but emotionally it leaves me pretty numb. I find that the best songs on this release are the ones featuring somewhat slower, more maudlin melodies (particularly the first and last songs), where the music shifts out of its dissonant shades of grey and actually takes on a sort of rural and antiquated vibe, like music to accompany 19th-century photography; but for the most part, Furdidurke seem determined to stick to music that avoids especially melodic motifs. The seven songs on this rehearsal tape shuffle around a lot of riffs (almost too many), but they all seemingly bleed together - whenever I'm not listening to this, I can only remember maybe two or three of them. Furdidurthermore, I'm not sold on how the band transition between the riffs they've written. There are a lot of sudden key changes that don't make an awful lot of sense, and sections that seemingly repeat for too long before moving on. A typical Furdidurke song doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere: it comes on, juggles back and forth between its melodies, then eventually ends.

The generally amorphous, unfocused quality to Furdidurke's music isn't helped by the fact that this is a rehearsal recording. The guitars sound flat and are piled up in the center of the mix instead of panned, the drums are way too loud, the vocal performance is too buried to comment upon at length, and overall it sounds like, well, a rehearsal. As odd as the songwriting is at times, Native essentially proves that Furdidurke can actually be pretty good when they want to be, so long as they take the time to mix their music and stop pretending that people should be expected to like the crappy production on their rehearsals just because it's "more real and natural, maaaaaaan". If you buy this, know that you won't be paying for the music - you'll be paying for the right to tell people that you own an album by a band named Furdidurke.