Like Merlin, Montreal’s Feeling Figures are aging in reverse. Everything Around You, their excellent follow-up to last year’s sleeper underground hit Migration Music, is actually their first album—at least in terms of when it was recorded. Who knows what internal math pushed this one to the back of the line, but it was a smart call—it’s actually a stronger, deeper, and richer LP (and other comparatives, even), and one of the better underground rock records of the last few years. And you can be excused for just assuming the band’s from Australia, as they’ve been schooling the rest of the world on this kind of stuff for a couple of decades now.
If you’re well-versed in the wayward permutations of unpopular music, you’ll know the score here immediately. Two guitars, bass, drums—as trad a lineup as possible—playing rock music, but not that kind of rock music; i.e., not something you would ever hear on classic rock radio, no matter how much time passes (those stations still exist, and they’re probably playing Vampire Weekend even as I type). Think White Light / White Heat, Wire’s second record, Sonic Youth, early Dinosaur Jr., and a ton of New Zealand and Australian bands, from The Clean all the way up to whatever new group Jake Robertson formed today. Feeling Figures fit squarely into that legacy, and Everything Around You is a fine addition to that canon.
Across these 11 songs you’ll hear the good stuff: coolly plodding rhythms, guitars that can play pristinely off each other one second before churning up a din, straight-forward team vocals that only get expressive when the situation really calls for it. On top of it all is a steady but restrained use of noise—everything’s a little dried out, a little fuzzy, but not disorienting or overwhelming. They’re songs, first and foremost, not skronkfests or freeform jams, and there’s a good amount of breadth and scope to ‘em.
Album opener “Co-operator” is a slow-burn epic that immediately ups the stakes from Migration Music, like a statement of purpose, an announcement that this is the real Feeling Figures. The punky “Doors Wide Open,” with its familiar four-chord riff and blowsy, fuzzed-out guitar solo, fits squarely on the indie-pop spectrum that was originally forged in part by K Records, one of the two labels who put this record out. “Space Burial” (how did Hawkwind not use that first?) is perhaps the most overtly Sonic Youth-inspired thing on here, with guitars exploring their way around each other before settling into a couple of riffs and a solo that sounds like the blues played by somebody who’s read about the blues but never actually heard ‘em before. The true peak—and the clearest proof that, as great as Migration Music was, Feeling Figures have a lot more to offer—is the last song, “Social Anatomy,” a lengthy chug of art-damaged garage stomp that could be summed up as “basement Rolling Stones.” Pre-electro pop Of Montreal used to do a shockingly great live cover of “Sister Ray”; “Social Anatomy” reminds me of that.
Everything Around You is a great work in part because it’s very deliberately considered without ever feeling belabored. It also exists in a well-defined, decades-old context but finds its own voice within it; yes, it might make you think of all the influences and inspirations that came before Feeling Figures, but it doesn’t imitate them. Feeling Figures have made a fantastic album that only they could make; now let’s see if they have some even earlier tapes that somehow outdo these songs.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about music, videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and more. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.
