Forts

The Boggs

Tangled Up

2008-02-25

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We Are the Boggs We Are and Stitches came closely after one another in 2002 and 2003 respectively, however The Boggs’ third album Forts has been a while longer in the making. Unlike its predecessors it is essentially a modern, indie-rock record, though the group’s style is different and varied, though keeping the mix of folk and acoustic elements along side post-punk and noise. True to form too, songwriter and one constant member Jason Friedman is here joined by a large array of collaborators, including names familiar both from previous Boggs work and for alternative day jobs including percussionists Brad Conroy and Julian Gross (the latter of Liars) and vocalists Heather D’Angelo (Au Revoir Simone) and Karen Sharky.

Forts is an engaging and raw album, generally delivering rousing percussion-heavy numbers with shouty ensemble vocals such as in pulsating dancer “Remember The Orphans”. Electro stabs and distorted riffs come on in “Arm in Arm” and “Bookends” pumps forward with its raw vocals and forceful percussion. Elsewhere the big drums and loud strums of “So I So You” work this newer more focused sound, but the group also puch a little further towards the end of the experimental spectrum on “If We Want (We Can)”, turning the noise up a notch and drenching its instrumentation in warbling, echoing fuzz — alongside frantic handclaps, disco bass and a percussion rock-out, all within 1:41. 

the beat finds a groove in its polyphonic texture of stick clicks, multiple guitar riffs and percussion

The album offers much in the way of catchiness both in noisier tracks like “Melanie In The White Coat” or the calmly experimental “Poorthings” where the beat finds a groove in its polyphonic texture of stick clicks, multiple guitar riffs and percussion. “Little Windows” offers example of the more upbeat twisted folk efforts the album also often offers, recalling The Moldy Peaches with its boy/girl vocals and quirky Buddy Holly bustling guitars and shuffling percussion. Tracks also retreat in to close, light and intimate regions, like on the heartfelt yet resolutely aimed-at-upbeat “One Year On”, or on “The Passage”, with its reflective vocals and repeating blues-riff. The group also give us two versions of the humble “After The Day”, one voiced by Friedman and the other, closing the record, by D’Angelo.

The Boggs are yet to burst right up overground to achieve the sales that contemporaries like The Strokes, Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs have had and that their critical acclaim suggests at, yet Forts’ comparative modernness and focus, alongside its catchiness and percussive drive, suggests that an at least subconscious effort has been made to rectify this. Accordingly its a fun record, and delivers some party moments, however the music could still be better, and their sound and appeal is still quite particular.