Blueberry Boat
by The Fiery Furnaces

This album proves for me that even the music community is not purely deterministic; the truly great music will not always rise to the top. This album was initially met with either unnaturally high ratings or quite low ones. I saw on Metacritic that NME (but, seriously, screw NME) called it "Toe-curlingly unlistenable" whereas, say, Pitchfork gave it the rare score of 9.6 (the only albums to receive a 9.6 or higher since then are Funeral by Arcade Fire, Merriweather Post-Pavilion by Animal Collective, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West, all of which are in the BEA top 100). So how did this album drop out of this canon of classics? It disappeared slowly. After both of the albums were released, Pitchfork released a list of the best albums from 2000-04 placing Blueberry Boat HIGHER than Funeral. At the year end, they put Funeral at #1 and Blueberry Boat at the still formidable #4. By the decade's end, Funeral was at #2 for the 2000s and Blueberry Boat sat all the way down at #145. The thing is that critics know this is a great album. It almost escapes the grasp of exegesis. But the general public somehow gets away with claims of it being "Too long" or "Too dense." This has pulled it out of sight. I'm not saying that Blueberry Boat is better than Funeral. I think it's close. But I definitely think it ranks higher than 2,047 (its current rank on BEA). (Edited)

From ShaneSpear TOP 100 COMMENTER 04/04/2013 19:09 | #71388 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

It's weird how a song you really don't think about that often can become very important all of a sudden. I lost my dog last night and the last like 12 hours have been 12 of the most stressful. She's just been found safe and sound about 15 minutes ago to my great relief, and now I can look back and actually appreciate the horrible song that has been in my head for the last half day non-stop (My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found.) (Edited)

From ButterThumbz TOP 100 COMMENTER 11/23/2012 09:11 | #55708 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Starts like a nursery rhyme but slowly mutates, Tetsuo style, until you are consumed by it's madness. (Edited)

From Hayden TOP 100 COMMENTER 10/17/2011 22:24 | #28603 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Gets wackier & wackier as you go along. Good album though. Nice melodies at times, with the craziness of Sonic Youth at other times. Lyrics are interesting, and the female's voice is really calming. Might be a bit of psychedelia in there, but I can't tell. Overall, worth a listen.

From Defago 10/14/2012 03:09 | #52307 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Great album! Really fun, yet really complex too. (Edited)