Henri Fabergé and the Adorables

Toronto's Henri Faberge is the alter ego of Henry Fletcher, who dealt with more serious themes with his group Spitfires and Mayflowers and was looking for a chance to bang out funny songs with his friends on the side. Thankfully for all of us, Fletcher and his friends happen to be quite talented, and if they seem to be aiming for laughs most of the time on Henri Faberge and the Adorables, their sense of humor is thankfully clever and the jokes are pretty funny. Musically, Henri Faberge and the Adorables leans towards bright, upbeat pop, but with a large and eclectic cast of backing musicians (complete with a horn section and a Theremin), and the tunes boast a welcome sense of sophistication, delivering intelligence and hum-ability in equal measure as they jump from sunny folk-pop to manic semi-thrash. The lyrics for the most part deal with the traditional comic obsessions of twenty-somethings -- sex, cultural oddities and the absurdity of our modern world -- but Fletcher and company make this stuff sound agreeably fresh and genuinely funny, and the massed vocal harmonies add to the tickle factor of "Crawl Back", "Rub & Suck & Tug (�Til My Vacation's Over)" and "Out Of Your League". Ryan Mills' clean and well detailed production serves the music well, and by the time it's over Henri Faberge and the Adorables suggests the love child of Barenaked Ladies and Camper Van Beethoven, and if it isn't as revelatory as Telephone Free Landslide Victory, it generates more, better and smarter laughs than Gordon. A very promising debut. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide