Bitter Tea's ability to be both a (somewhat) radio-friendly pop record and a thoroughly engaging and rich work of art makes it something truly special.  Full text...

Unique sounds that require great attention, because hidden deep inside the difficulties and ambiguities there are personal meanings waiting to be discovered by all.  Full text...

Despite the mismatches of mood and style, wistfulness accumulates throughout this album's 72 minutes; there's an intriguing inwardness at the heart of this most cultish of bands.  Full text...

If you loved Sufjan Stevens's tapestry-like Illinoise, make this your next purchase.  Full text...

The Fiery Furnaces are a positive repertory for sound, and almost avant-garde.  Full text...

With its varied textures, conceptual continuity and typically unique songcraft, Bitter Tea, on the other hand, does count as the latest in a growing line of intriguing releases from one of the most remarkable sibling duos in indie-rock. Sweet.  Full text...

The project seems in part to be about finding a way to challenge themselves and stay interested when writing good, catchy songs comes so easy.  Full text...

If Blueberry Boat felt vivid and adventurous and Rehearsing My Choir was earthy avant-Prairie Home Companion mush, Bitter Tea feels scattered and single-minded, sometimes paranoid.   Full text...

Tea's songs layer what sound like the cheapest Casios known to man atop one another, taking off on unexpected tangents, then circling back. But what initially sounds like randomly spliced bits of third-generation new-wave mix-tapes gets more intriguing with each listen, largely because beneath the air of general weirdness, there's a perverse pop sensibility.  Full text...

Strip all of the digital fills and percussive farts, the ad nauseam backward loops and wildly unpredictable tempo changes from the Fiery Furnaces' Bitter Tea, and what you're left with is a pretty solid pop album.  Full text...

If The Fiery Furnaces' style is something that you inherently like, I'm sure you'll love Bitter Tea from start to finish.   Full text...

if they were to take the best ideas in Bitter Tea and flesh them out over a forty-minute album, I'd imagine it would be one of the best things we'd hear all year. Instead, we're left with an over-bloated musical grab bag that's less than the sum of its parts.  Full text...

As the title suggests, this album is - deliberately, you feel - a thwarted pleasure, any sweetness and warmth being spiked with discordance and bitterness.  Full text...

Bitter Tea sounds like a desperate plea to be labeled as "clever."  Full text...

There are a few high points -- the delightfully gruesome subject matter of winsome ballad Teach Me Sweetheart, the beatbox-driven doo-wop of Waiting To Know You, the Bob Dylan shuffle of Police Sweater Blood Vow -- but they don't save an album where two-thirds of the songs fail to cohere.  Full text...

It’s as if they’re forever in search of new ways to annoy us.  Full text...

Rather than distilling the essence of their previous albums for a career-defining effort, The Fiery Furnaces deliver a quarter dose of each previous album's charms on Bitter Tea.  Full text...