Saqqara Mastabas - Libras

Pitchfork 64

Matthew Friedberger’s career is ripe for rediscovery. Though he hasn’t been invisible since Fiery Furnaces went on hiatus in 2011, he has kept the lowest possible profile available to an indie star with a penchant for releasing as many as eight albums in a year. Given all the liner notes and promotional prose that can be read as both funny and intentionally confusing, he may sometimes appear unserious about holding your attention. Yet he has not lost his rare talent for melody.

Vinyl-only sets like Napoleonette and Old Regimes—as well as a 2015 Bandcamp release—all feature memorable stretches that can go lick for lick with beloved Furnaces compositions from Bitter Tea or I’m Going Away. (See: saloon piano on “I’ll Ride Right Up On My Mule,” charming rockers like “I Met the Queen of the Night in the Daytime,” the harp hypnosis of “She’s Relieved, Actually,” or else the synth lines in “I Wasn’t Working.”)

He can also flummox his most committed listeners. A double-album collage that used the “Solos” LPs as source material cannibalized some of his most interesting post-Furnaces music in the service of an exhausting, scatterbrained aesthetic. But for anyone interested in pop as well as modernism, it’s worth checking in on Friedberger—and cherishing the moments when the fractured song structures find communion with his core catchiness.

Libras is the first release from Friedberger’s duo with Sebadoh (and sometime Furnaces) drummer Bob D’Amico. It’s all instrumental, though it's not particularly experimental or dense. The opening track, “Walking Through the False Door,” has a brittle, goofball feel playfully at odds with the title’s reference to ancient religious thought. (The duo’s name, Saqqara Mastabas, is also steeped in Egyptology.) But starting with the next number—“Fixed by the Tiny Talons of the Vulture Goddess”—Friedberger and D’Amico loosen up a bit, with the drummer laying free-improv fills over Friedberger’s slowly repeating chord progressions.

Despite the set’s focused reliance on synths and drums, the best tracks conjure a welcome variety of styles. “No Escape for the Serfs on the Surf” begins with grid of programmed beats and acoustic percussion, as bell-like timbres carry the melody; eventually Friedberger’s keyboard playing slides into more ecstatic, rushing figures, while the percussion invokes Indian classical music.

The usual Friedberger hybridism is here in force, though the sequence of ideas tends to be well paced, with no individual concept sticking around for too long. The freneticism occasionally manages to create an unexpectedly chill profile, too—as in the early going of “Uto on the Upswing” (which eventually turns gonzo, before finishing on a placid chord). Motorik funk and a descending, four-note earworm drive “The Failure (Of the Fencing of the Underground Apart from the Apartments’ Part).” And “The Cosmetician’s Knife” sounds like a dance-mix rethink of Friedberger’s “I Wasn’t Working.”

A couple of the shorter numbers sound comparatively insubstantial—more akin to video-game background music than standalone compositions. And nothing quite reaches the heights of Friedberger’s recent, pop-song solo work. But Libras does make for a consistently engaging half-hour of oddball riffs and themes. And it’s also a reminder of what Friedberger is capable of when he clicks with another talented collaborator.