Movin' on up/ To the Upper West Side/ To that club gig show in the sky. It's a familiar script: Brooklyn quartet Flying broke out in 2006 with their self-recorded debut Just-One-Second-Ago Broken Eggshell, which crackled with the sort of electricity that occurs when too many kids-- well, three, anyway-- enter a room with too many instruments. What follows is a new label-- Menlo Park-- a sophomore effort, Faces of the Night, recorded out of pocket at Illinois' Keyclub Recording Co., and presumably a larger touring profile. The hangup, of course, is Flying sound slower, denser, and less like a dynamic Brooklyn skewering of twee and more properly like wannabe residents of Athens, Geo., or Olympia, Wash.
This isn't selling out, of course, but the refinements are disappointing. Vocals are introduced in entirely conventional manners; there seem to be "vehicles" for each of the band members-- Sara Magenheimer's adolescent coo and then the three more indistinguishable males: Eliot Krimsky, Eben Portnoy, and new member Mike Johnson-- rather than the tactical "if you're near a mic, sing"-approach of the first album. Out-of-tune bits sound less like interludes gone haywire and more like songs sung out of tune. No longer do woodpeckers interrupt or claptrap drums rock, then roll. The arrangement scream "A lot of thought went into this!"; creating art this way is noble but it ultimately distances Flying from their most productive impulses.
Faces is not devoid of sparkly, inspired moments. "Stains" is built on a funk riff that stops only for Mt. Eerie-lite harmonies. "One-Eyed Son" opens the album with a cartoony boing-ing sound effect promptly mimicked by a festive acoustic guitar and a vocal melody that sounds like it's rocking in a chair with an uneven leg. On "Draw It in the Dark" Magenheimer does her best Moe Tucker impression over a pleasantly arepeggiating guitar: "I'm Sticking to You" airbrushed onto a Lisa Frank folder. Still, too many reminders of how weirdly linear Flying have become: "Fear of Flying" switches from a beatific drum machine pat to Sufjan Stevens' plaintive piano chording to a major key organ drone and finally to choppy guitar strumming, but each section's execution is Catholic. "Firetruck"'s bassline sounds like corkscrewed big-tent music but it carries on for four minutes before an electric guitar and some reverberated "ahh ahh"'s ride the song out for another two, producing the sort of watch-glancing length the Flying wisely avoid elsewhere. Other songs-- "Poor Simone", "The Wrong Hearts", "Double-Hearted Clown"-- plod without event.
Flying are well within their rights attempting this transformation, of course, but their move from avant-pop that fused Brooklyn's best out-music tendencies to four-track bedroom twee to careerist indie pop is an acutely stinging injustice. The most disappointing aspect of Faces of the Night-- especially in light of their debut-- is that it seems sustainable. Probably good for them, you know, in the long run.
