FIBS
London-based composer Anna Meredith loves a corkscrew spiral, a manic grid, and key changes that lurch between nausea and pleasure. Few songs on her second album, *Fibs*, end where they start—“Sawbones” traverses precipitous bass, chiptune reverie, and a symphony in hyperdrive—yet her classical grounding ensures a keen eye on the dynamic sweep. An opening half of screaming crescendos (“Calion”) and regal pomp (“Killjoy”) begets a reprieve of power pop (“Limpet”) and girlish dreaminess (“Ribbons”)—only to end with a bang with “Paramour,” a song that makes “Sawbones” sound like Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”
The eagerly anticipated second studio album, FIBS, is out now via Moshi Moshi/Black Prince Fury. Arriving three and a half years on from the release of her Scottish Album of the Year Award-winning debut studio album Varmints, FIBS is 45 minutes of technicolour maximalism, almost perpetual rhythmic reinvention, and boasts a visceral richness and unparalleled accessibility. FIBS is no “Varmints Part 2” — the retreading of old ground, or even a smooth progression from one project to another, just isn’t Meredith’s style. Instead, if anything, it’s “Varmints 2.0”, an overhauled and updated version of the composer’s soundworld, involving, in places, a literal retooling that has seen Meredith chuck out her old MIDI patches and combine her unique compositional voice with brand-new instruments, both acoustic and electronic, and a writing process that’s more intense than she’s ever known. Despite Meredith’s background and skills these tracks are no academic exercise, the world of FIBS is at both overwhelming and intimate, a journey of intense energy and joyful irreverence. FIBS, says Meredith, are “lies — but nice friendly lies, little stories and constructions and daydreams and narratives that you make for yourself or you tell yourself”. Entirely internally generated and perfectly balanced, they can be a source of comfort and excitement, intrigue and endless entertainment. The eleven fibs contained on Anna Meredith’s second record will do all that, and more besides.
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Anna Meredith's new album is a maximal and intricate album that blurs boundaries between the organic and electronic
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Anna Meredith's ‘FIBS’ finds the singer-songwriter continuing to defy genre and break the rules. Read our review.
The brilliantly unpredictable composer is back making rollercoastering solo albums full of irreverent experiments and serious innovation