This is the cover. Click on it to go to flickr where you can see it a bit bigger. That's all you get until it's out, though. Tentative street date: May 24.

The Fiery Furnaces album: I have been listening to it for about a month now. At first I hated it, but then I grew to like it, as has been the case with most of their other stuff. But one of the big things I liked about them was their lyrics, which have previously been weird, obtuse narratives about a million different things. On this album they are mostly either (a) repetitive nursery-rhyme type things, or (b) played backwards so you can't understand them.

My other problem with this album is that he chops up the songs all weirdly, and THEN presents the nice sweet straightforward edits of them at the end of the album! What's with that? So willfully difficult! The straightforward version of "Benton Harbor Blues" is such a great song. Sticks in my head all the live-long day. I'm sure I would have liked the long, cut-up, "difficult" version better if they hadn't SHOWN me the wonderful breezy pop version. Whatever that means.

Anyway, I still like it, and I plan to buy it or whatever. I like the cover.