| Urb |
 Los Angelean Fol Chen belongs to an elite cadre of musicians (i.e. Enon, Rafter, Starlight Mints, Xiu Xiu) who make albums into careers. Each record these bands make is something reflective of progression that most artists might achieve if given 40 years; the music is unpredictable at the macro and micro level with every song steeped a different style. And in the case of Fol Chen they master any genre they get their hands on, then pioneer new ground via cross pollination of the gamut (they describe their sound as “You know that mysterious black object that the creepy family is staring at on the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Presence album? Fol Chen sound(s) like that.”)
Purportedly directed by main men Samuel Bing and Julian Wass (despite occasional internet cock blocking, the band relishes in mysterious anonymity), the sextet flits around the 15/8 meter opener (“The Holograms”) with ball-busting gated tom toms, glitching circuits, punctuating acoustic guitar notes and twee female vocals. With its breathy near-falsetto and three-part harmonies, “C/U” could be a lost ‘N Sync b-side, though one where Timbaland’s lopsided Casio symphony got him kicked off the project for being “too weird”. Dance punk tempos meet squirrely toy guitar recordings, kooky pseudo-Latin accents and a placid-yet-snarling vocal on “They Came to Me”. Liars’ Angus Andrews and Aaron Hemphill contribute to a Greek chorus of whispers and otherwise aesthetics to the stomping “This is Where the Road Belongs”. As demonstrated on the fey flute and frame-drum driven “Holes” and the eerie stoner strum of “Men, Beasts or Houses”, the group is also capable of occasional meditating calm.
There are points during the disc when you wish the rollercoaster would relent, but that is beside the point: Fol Chen are pop experimentalists, deft song-writers and immaculate producers who have a lot to say – so hang on! Those who can…do....full text |
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| Allmusic |
| Fol Chen continues to embrace mystery and avoid the obvious on Part II: The New December. As on Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, the enigmatic band makes a virtue out of indirectness, sending songs through secret passages and tunnels that end in hooks some distance from where they were expected. There’s a strong experimental streak in the brainy way Fol Chen takes what seems like a straightforward idea and twists it into something completely different; like the Dirty Projectors, the group flirts with and subverts mainstream pop ideas, and like labelmates Cryptacize, they’ve got a flair for the deceptively simple. The band goes even further down the rabbit hole than on Part I, beginning The New December with some of its strangest music. “In Ruins” contrasts deep, whispered vocals with lively girlish ones atop busy keyboards playing busy, vaguely Eastern-tinged melodies; “Your Curtain Call” begins with breathy beats and woozy flutes, expanding into bells and a drunken sax solo before pulling back again; and “Men, Houses or Beasts” tiptoes so slowly that it almost sounds like it was recorded at the wrong speed. Fittingly for a band so committed to disguising its identity, some of The New December’s best songs deal with miscommunication and missed connections. On “The Holograms,” a tale of forgotten names and words doubling into optical illusions, bounces along on one of the album’s catchiest melodies, while the excellent “C/U” keeps its lovers apart despite its almost perversely straightforward beat. Likewise, the band buries some of its best songs on the album’s second half: “Adeline (You Always Look so Bored)”’s sharp-tongued chamber pop recalls St. Vincent’s abundant musical and lyrical wit, and “They Came to Me” boasts rubbery beats that are just as danceable as they are strange, and could be heard at a club with a trampoline for a dancefloor. How exactly these songs fit together with “Holes”’ delicate plucking and the title track’s pixelated folk might be locked in Fol Chen’s brains, but even if there are more pieces of their puzzle-pop missing here than there were on John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, The New December is never boring....full text |
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| Avclub |
| Only two albums into their career, the L.A. art-pop weirdoes in Fol Chen already have a labyrinthine mythology—not that it’s particularly worth recounting. On Part II: The New December, the group members, who hide behind masks and non-sequitur-laden bios, continue to obsess over bygone Long Island radio station WLIR, a language-eating virus, and the function of bureaucracy in a post-apocalyptic world. But as with 2009’s Part I: John Shade, Your Fortune’s Made, even a narrative as outsized as that jostles for attention against the band’s infectious cut-and-paste production, which jumbles glitchy IDM beats, brittle ’80s funk lines, and music-box arrangements of woodwinds and strings into something both cutesy and menacing. Like December’s storyline, it’s fascinating but lacking cohesion: The singsong electro-pop of “The Holograms” and “In Ruins,” the horror-movie drones of the Liars-assisted “This Is Where The Road Belongs,” the stiffly soulful, Terence Trent D’Arby-evoking “C/U,” and the dainty coos of “Adeline (You Always Look So Bored)” sound like they come from completely different bands, while half-formed songs such as “Men, Beasts Or Houses” and “The Holes” sag under the weight of too many samples substituting for musical direction. Fol Chen’s commitment to writing music from a depersonalized angle is commendable as an artistic experiment—and more often than not, it surprises with unexpectedly beguiling hooks—but it’s beginning to feel like its self-imposed mystery is a cover for its identity crisis....full text |
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