When I saw these guys open for the Shins almost three months ago, I was expecting to hear the odd but sensible sounds of their less than a year old debut, Gallowsbird Bark. Boy was I in for a bumpy ride. What they played was a non-stop (and I mean non-stop, it all felt like one long song) 45 minute set, mostly of this bizarre new material that I had never heard. While the brother and sister duo of Matthew and Eleanor Freidberger (yes they really are brother and sister) were up on stage freaking out, and delivering their wacked-out message to the crowd, the audience was in shock. Hell, I was in shock! "What the fuck was that?" I asked a couple of friends of mine. All they could do was shake their heads. They were completely stunned as well. One thing was absolutely for sure, The Shins were screwed, and not in a good way. 30 minutes was all I could take of The Shins, because after being thoroughly exhausted by the Fiery Furnaces set, I had to go home and go straight to bed.

Even after seeing that insane display of a show, it still could not prepare me for what may be the craziest sophomore album ever recorded. Well, what about the new Liars album? You may ask. Yeah, but that was crazy because it was just noise from a self-destructing band. Blueberry Boat is a 76 minute tea cup ride on acid. This album is one explosion of creativity after another - all captured on a single disc. And after nearly 20 listens, I still can't figure this enigma out. "Stories of Spain," dogs being lost, walking home from TCBY, it's all here delivered at a breakneck pace with some of the most bizarre music ever recorded. No song here ends where it began. Every song is completely unpredictable, and almost impossible to figure out what certain topics have to do with each other.

Blueberry Boat is a schizophrenics wet dream. It feels like the Friedberger's have 50 sets of personalities running through their brain, and each one is trying to tell their part of the story. It's completely fascinating, but not always coherant enough to work as listenable music. Trying to explain this album any further would be almost impossible, because I, nor anyone else, can explain any further what Blueberry Boat means, and if someone tells you they can, they're lying. These are the type of people that try to tell you what the meaning of a David Lynch film is. Actually, that is the best analogy of this album I can offer. Blueberry Boat is the equivalent of a David Lynch film: beautiful, strangely twisted with no real answers to be found.

What hurts my brain even further is that the Fiery Furnaces are just about done completing two more full-length albums, and one of them will feature their grandmother on it. Even though I can't make heads or tails of the world these two live in, I say bring it on, because this is originality at its most extreme. If you're the kind of person that thinks Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart or Olivia Tremor Control records are for pussies, Blueberry Boat may be the answer to all of life's little questions for you.