FuGlu is a Stew!
Some bands are soups, some bands are stews.
You know how with some soups you can only identify the ingredients through taste, because they've been blended together so completely? Whereas with stews, you retain the individual tastes and textures of the ingredients?
That said, Fugitive Glue is a stew. (Yeah, I went a long way for a rhyme. Sue me, it's Nashville.)
The ingredients that make up the FuGlu stew - Michael Webb, Rick Plant, Craig Wright, Eliot Houser - bring such a diversity of flavors to the mix that none of the 15 tracks (well, 14 if you discount the spoken-word ramble Guido and Rok) sound the same.
There's the pick-up line rock of the opener Hey, the determined lope of Family Kind and the jangly self-examination of Find Me Another that's counterbalanced by the funkified Monkey Man, the down-home psychedelia of Wishes and the Sgt. Pepper-esque She's The One.
And then there are the "two sides of the same coin" tracks, Ego and Nashville Town, where the boys take some playful swipes at "the biz," namely the clueless elevation of karaoke queens to stardom and the soul-sucking desperation that sometimes comes in the attempt to make a living doing what you love.
The net result gives all the Gluey primaries that chance to shine, with the crisp wordplay bouncing nicely off the sonics. These are young veteran musicians who know how to put songs together, making the complex sound simple and fun.
-- Lucas Hendrickson (The Rage)
Spread a little FuGlu on that Angst
It's a fundamental, universal law: Rock 'n' roll is supposed to be fun.
Sure, we got away from that some in the early '90s, when angst and flannel somehow formed a combustible element that took a lot of the joy out of rock. But slowly we're getting back to the notion that it's OK to rock out with a smile on your face, a smirk in your lyrics and a jangle in your guitar.
Take local power popsters Fugitive Glue, for example. First off, it's just a fun name to say, and the shortened version (say it with us . . . FuGlu) is even better.
And then you get to the music on their newly released debut, Mateo. It's smart, snappy power pop that ranges from the undulating ''How you doin'?'' nature of Hey to the driving, pop culture commentary of Ego.
And those are just the first two tracks. Subsequent tunes tackle the idea of peace-keeping conformity on If Linda Likes It, the out-and-out funk of Monkey Man and a Spanish ballad that has to be heard to be believed on Hetero Macho.
--The Tennesseean