Fur - Facing Home Mixtape: Mini Review
These days a lot of pop rock bands have sounds that can eventually become derivative and a bore. They eventually return to the fold something interesting, but for an up and coming band like Fur, they seem to be heading backwards on their newest project. Facing Home Mixtape is unlike some of the post-modern folk rock that brought about intrigue from this critic. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing as they do find some interesting sounds to work with. Murray, along with his band, really try and create a lot of unique tunes that don’t always land. However, when it the tracks hits their mark, it is almost bombastically great.
Facing Home Mixtape are the simple tweaks that make their sound play more than the influences they take. “You,” is this ambient and moody take on a beach rock song, reminiscent of a late 50 Beach Boys slow tune. And it excels at being something less derivative, as opposed to another track that becomes a try hard.
They lose their sulking charm on some parts of the album. The charm that was expressed on singles like “If You Know That I’m Lonely, and “Angel Eyes.” And though the sulking charm is still there at times, a lot of the overall instrumentations feels thin on the latter part of the album.
The album is definitely more pop in sound this time around and for the most part it works for them. The moments you hear the acoustics have a luscious bombastic nature like “Closed Curtain.” The only drawback comes from Murray’s singing which doesn’t always have a standout quality to it on the project, though it still shines because of his unique vocal pitches.
There isn’t much on Facing Home Mixtape that embodies the naturalistic rockers in them. None of the tracks come across like “Angel Eyes” from 2018. But what they lack on the tracks on the album isn’t disorganized. They do make some of the sounds work on the album, even if it isn’t stylistically in their nature. They stopped using what mostly worked and went a direction they’ve dabbled in before but not truly mastered. It remains apparent on this new release without hindering the overall product.