'Very impressive (especially considering this is a debut). Well done, That Noble Fury.' - Vin Scelsa, host of 'Idiot's Delight' WFUV New York, The Loft, Sirius XM-30 'You'll be played next week, and the next... Great disc, guys. Very impressive work.' - Kenn McCracken, host of The Show With No Name, Birmingham Mountain Radio Named The Deli Magazine's New England Artist of the Month About the record: That Noble Fury is the brainchild of songwriters, singers, and multi-instrumentalists Anthony Blaha and Tom Fellows who met on their first day as students at John Hopkins University over their mutual interest in rock and pop music. Reminiscent of other famed creative duos, the pair's debut album, That Noble Fury, is a musical magical mystery tour ranging from the whimsical pop of My Elephant to the jagged angularity of Parachute Jumper, from the radio-ready The Killers-meet-Squeeze romance of License to Kiss to the chamber-pop suite of Nice to See You Alive, the latter of which comes complete with a faux Carmen flamenco interpolation of the Partridge Family's I Think I Love You and an improvised burlesque outro nicknamed 'Welcome To My Island.' Call it heady pop. What else would you expect from a pair of college alumni, one who majored in mathematics and economics, with a minor in entrepreneurship and management and Italian studies (Tom), while the other studied theatre under the legendary John Astin and graduated from the school's prestigious writing seminars department with a classics minor (Anthony)? That Noble Fury's self-titled debut is a musical message in a bottle, confronting issues of modern-day isolation, alienation, and loneliness. The album boasts an eclectic palette that packs the stacked harmonies and complex arrangements of the Beatles and Queen with the moody alternative angst of Smashing Pumpkins, striving to connect and find a common culture through a wide scope redolent of modern rockers such as MGMT, Foster the People, Arcade Fire, and Spoon. I love albums you can listen to and get lost in for an hour, says Anthony, who grew up playing a second-hand piano and making recordings in his bedroom in rural Pennsylvania. Each song stands on it's own, but this album is meant to be experienced as a whole and, hopefully, you come out of it feeling a little different, either viscerally or mentally: starting in one place and ending in another. That is exactly what the listener experiences throughout That Noble Fury. The album opens with Parachute Jumper, the story of a young man who goes into the army, and moves through fourteen tracks like the darkly sensual Room By Room, the cabaret-punk of Boy Get Back, the poppy piano and string combination of In California, and ends with the haunting Sail On and it's ensuing rush of strings and electronics which bring the album to a climactic close. Each song takes on it's own persona, adds Tom, who began playing piano in fourth grade and went on to pick up the guitar and sing in a cappella groups in high school and then college. They're really about ourselves and our growth, the different experiences we've had with friends and loves, and the changes we've gone through. One hears that perspective in Charlie or the acoustic Stars and Stars, with their intimations of how the past impacts the present, as the lingering presence of those long gone continues to influence the living. John Lennon died in 1980, before I was born, relates Anthony, and he is still the single most important artistic influence on my life. Even though I never actually met him, I still have this connection and 'ownership' of him through his work, which is both real and not real. That Lennon/McCartney influence can be heard on the one-two punch of North, a surreal builder that rises and falls, and the sardonic ditty Barbershoppe, which evokes the music hall strains of Sgt. Pepper and Sweeney Todd. The album features several numbers which echo of musical theater antecedents such as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof)
