- Source: Rong Weicknes
Rong Weicknes (pronounced "wrong weakness") is the third album and second studio album by Belgian-American band Fievel Is Glauque. It was released on October 25, 2024, on Fat Possum Records.
Background and recording
Fievel Is Glauque announced Rong Weicknes on August 14, 2024, alongside the release of the lead single "As Above So Below". Recorded at the Outlier Inn in Upstate New York's Catskill Mountains, the album featured six instrumentalists in addition to the band's core duo of vocalist Ma Clément and keyboardist Zach Phillips.
The album continued the band's tendency for unusual recording processes, following their 2021 album God's Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess, which was recorded in mono on a cassette tape, and their 2022 debut studio album Flaming Swords, which was recorded in its entirety in one night. Rong Weicknes was recorded over the course of a week "live in triplicate", a process in which the band layered two straightforward takes of the album atop a third, more improvisatory take. The three takes were then subtractively edited together by mixing and mastering engineer Steve Vealey.
Two songs from the album, "Dark Dancing" and "I'm Scanning Things I Can't See", were released as a double single on August 15, 2023, but were later re-recorded in triplicate for the album.
Critical reception
Rong Weicknes received largely positive reviews from music critics upon its release. At Metacritic, the album received an aggregate score of 77 based on 7 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
In a review for Pitchfork, Kieran Press-Reynolds called the album Fievel Is Glauque's "most giddily hyperkinetic, vividly colored, unabashedly maximalist record yet", describing its sound as a "jazzy version of middle-of-the-road '70s pop like the Carpenters, with a flurry of time signature and tempo shifts and extreme rhythmic flexibility". Writing for The Guardian, reviewer Ben Beaumont-Thomas described the album as a series of "teetering song-towers that never quite topple", summarizing that "brilliant melodies, poetic lyrics and quick-change time signatures elevate this quirky jazz pop release to a level all its own." In a positive review for The Quietus, Amanda Farah pointed to the unique experimental nature of the album's recording process, writing: "[Fievel Is Glauque's] third album is, at face value, upbeat, energetic, and channels the AM radio gold of '60s and '70s easy listening pop classics. For close listeners, it’s a million mosaicked pieces meticulously arranged and begging to be examined."
In a more mixed review for AllMusic, who assigned Rong Weicknes an Album Pick, Marcy Donelson wrote that "the songwriting is relatively variable, touching on familiar influences like French pop ('Haut Contre Bas'), jazzy vocal pop (the title track), Brazilian jazz ('I'm Scanning Things I Can't See'), and more", describing the album as "sweetly melodic and more structured at times (grooving second track 'As Above So Below') but is consistently uncanny and sometimes borders on harrowing", and concluding that the album's "triplicate" recording process ultimately makes it sound "muddled in many of its would-be fleeting spaces".
Track listing
Personnel
Adapted from Bandcamp.
Ma Clément – vocals
Zach Phillips – piano, clavinet, Voyetra-8, ARP String Ensemble
Thom Gill – electric guitar
Chris Weisman – rubber-bridge guitar, electric guitar, electric sitar, piano (track 9)
Logan Kane – electric bass, upright bass
André Sacalxot – alto saxophone, flute
Gaspard Sicx – drums
Daniel Rossi – percussion
