#migration magic

[purplealbumoftheday]

today's purple album of the day is: Migration Magic by Feeling Figures!

[dustedmagazine]

Feeling Figures — Migration Magic (Perenniel/K)

Feeling Figures channel joy and angst through fuzzy, noise-bent pop tunes. Mixed gender energies bubble from jittery sweet songs, with founders Zakary Slax and Kay Moon alternating on vocals, his sardonic and half-tuned, hers gently melodic; together, in harmonies, the sound is like burnt rock candy, sugary and bitter and sharp at once. And it’s not just the tunes that flitter from hard to ingratiating. Flayed guitar anarchy flares in the interstices of these songs, while the drums gallop manically in double time. There’s certainly a thread of NZ lo-fi running through these cuts—especially track #3 “Don’t Ever Let Me Know”—but also the naïve knowing-ness of K’s historic roster, Beat Happening, especially.

The band is a four-piece hatched in New Brunswick but now based out of Montreal. The line-up includes Slax and Moon plus Thomas Molander and Joe Chamandy. A self-titled EP launched the band in 2021, and this live-recorded full-length is the sole follow-up to date. It bristles with aggression, soothes with melody and looks right down into the swirling void, all with a beat you can jump up and down to.

“Movement” is the album’s clear high point, with its thwacking one-two beat, its slurred, slacker verse, and its “kick it out” bouts of antic punk frenzy. The furor dies down periodically for the Figs’ most anthemic chorus, “Hang on tight/to paradise” sing the band’s two principals in harmonies as sloppy as a drunken kiss, yet the hook is indelible.

“Pour Un Instant” is nearly as good, a spiked sugar rush of Francophone garage punk that clatters frantically but also floats free. Strung-out, sleepy-eyed “Across the Line” hits home, too, with its jangling, ringing, wide horizon guitar clamor reminiscent of the Feelies, its dream fuzzed vocals like the Softies.

It’s not easy to write songs that sound like they’re falling out of bed, but that stick and sting and stay with you. Falling Figures takes careless licks and offhand lines and makes them memorable. Good stuff.

Jennifer Kelly