Jazz is a Flaming Sword Size Contest

Fievel Is Glauque — Flaming Swords

(2 Dec 2022, commissioned by Shawn Zod)

Flaming Swords

It is easy to fall in love with Fievel is Glauque. When I first stumbled upon God’s Trashmen of the Earth, Decoy rang in my head over and over for weeks. They had this special knack for making bitesized sweet classy and irritable jazz hooks. While their initial impression on the internet (with Gods Trashmen) pushed a more charming lo-fi and bedroom budget studio aesthetic, Flaming Swords aimed to create a more polished and dense listening experience. It’s slightly more complex and fast-paced than its little brother. There’s a sense that they’ve matured, that they have just improved on all fronts, introducing an unpredictable jazz rock sound to their portfolio. But in doing so they have lost some of their warmth and playfulness that I fell in love with intheir last record.

I wouldn’t say at all that any one is better than the other, but listening to Flaming Swords I find myself fighting the urge to just put on Gods Trashmen instead. It feels as if they have let a disease take over, like they’re emulating a noisy jazz major that wants nothing more than to flex their newfound music theory — a dick size contest. I mean yeah. I’m impressed, blown away, absolutely this is an A* no questions asked, but in that sense I feel as if it’s a lot less catchy, as if I am being challenged by it instead of just having it compliment my hot chocolate. Gods Trashmen had a good amount of spice to keep things interesting on a fairly comfortable bossa nova vocal jazz formula. For better or for worse, that philosophy has been pushed to the backlines. Despite it all it still rims with personality and colour. There seems to be this trap in music making where soul is sacrificed for the sake of flexing music theory intellectualism like *cough cough* Jacob Collier *cough urghm* I mean seriously good god seriously that guy’s music is hard on the ears. It’s clear his intention is to help demonstrate cutting edge music ideas, rather than actually make anything even remotely enjoyable. For that I absolutely respect him, if it were not for his reddit tier fanbase that constantly gushes about him like he’s the second coming of christ. It pains me to even talk about both artists back to back but at some point it seemed Fievel is Glauque was faced with this dilemma.

Still, you probably needn’t wait for me to tell you this album is still a contender for the album of the year. If you're a fan of jazz fusion its a no brainer! And still, Flaming Swords, particularly tracks like “Save the Phenomenon” and “Paging Agent Starling,” manage to be solid earworms, all whilst taking you on a crazy harmonic journey.