Song Premiere: Fanfarlo's Sparkling 'Deconstruction'

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From an album due out in February, Fanfarlo's "Deconstruction" packs an awful lot of charming ingredients into a little less than five minutes.

John Best

From an album due out in February, Fanfarlo's "Deconstruction" packs an awful lot of charming ingredients into a little less than five minutes.

Pinpointing Fanfarlo's sound isn't easy: The U.K. band finds an agreeable but ever-shifting compromise between warm, vibrant folk-pop and the jittery, instrumentally dense, somewhat emotionally remote approach favored by any number of modern-day Talking Heads devotees. Fanfarlo's 2009 debut, Reservoir, is full of charmingly infectious corkers, but it's the work of musicians still staking out their own identity. The group's charming and increasingly confident live performances provided plenty of reasons for optimism, though — as does the marvelous "Deconstruction," the first track to surface from Fanfarlo's as-yet-untitled second record, due out in February. Next year is only minus-three months old, and this is already one of 2012's best songs.

Bookended by bits of moody atmosphere and propped up by guitar lines that glisten shinily enough to make The Cure proud, "Deconstruction" packs an awful lot of winning ingredients into a little less than five minutes: horns, synths, strings, a few glorious moments in which every band member seems to bellow along simultaneously. Still, in spite of the song's title, it's best not to take "Deconstruction" apart. The more toys Fanfarlo tosses onto the song's mile-high pile, the more fun it is to jump in and play along.