"Fly" is a sad, gentle love song with incredible harmonies and "The Present Tense Tureen" is a banjo-laden story of an encounter with an elf. "Poor Mary Lane" begins with a very TMBG sound but eventually sounds more like early Pink Floyd, owing this perhaps to the tasty organ throughout. Songs like "On Her Doorstep" and "Bed and Breakfast", with their prominent piano parts sound very much like a nod to Ben Folds Five. While most of the songs are excellent, for some reason they closed the album with the weak and rambling "Sad Today", following that with a "bonus" track of the even weaker (and ultimately more annoying) "Organ Grinder". Aside from their ability to craft tasty pop/country/alternative songs, the strongest asset of Moxy Früvous is their incredibly rich two and three part harmonies that grace every song, making it neigh impossible not to sing along with the part of your choice. There will probably be more Moxy Früvous albums added to my collection in the near future as I check out their previous recordings and hopefully they will be as solid as this one.
This review first appeared in WhatzUp, December 1999.