Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School. : Matthew Friedberger : Review : Rolling Stone

Friedberger's double-disc solo debut is as overstuffed and all-over-the-place as his work with Fiery Furnaces would indicate: twenty-nine messy pop collages, several of them barely coherent. The vaguely songful Winter Women offers whimsical blurts and squiggles, snatches of melody plus summery charmers like "Quick as Cupid"; Holy Ghost Language School is more outre, combining inspired, jazz-savvy weirdness with ambient hoo-ha and cheesy keybs, all tagged to a story line about an English-language school in Japan. Both albums could have been trimmed, duh, but there's enough good stuff to recommend to Furnaces fans -- or to anyone wondering what Ornette Coleman might have sounded like as an indie popper.