Andrew Broder crafted 10th Avenue Freakout as a rhythmic, up-front electronic-pop album, much less pensive and subdued than Fog's previous full-length,
Ether Teeth. His impeccable sense of pop spontaneity -- tremendous hooks sprinkled in among intense, droning atmospherics and lucid, loosely built drum machine lines -- is still very present, albeit far more out in the open and crisply produced, allowing for more standard songcraft and much less downtime.
Broder's twisted and often absurd lyrics, such as "Jesus Christ is my American Idol/He's the brand new funky president" from the catchy "We're Winning," are equally balanced by his moments of inspired illustration. "Hummer," for example, creates a bleak, bittersweet feeling of numbed malaise, which
Broder establishes very effectively, harmonizing with himself as he ponders, in a positively unaffected daze, what it's like "to be a sprinkler system in a thunderstorm." Fog is essentially
Andrew Broder's moniker, under which he pursues various projects, all considerably different but, like 10th Avenue Freakout, consistently imaginative and never predictable. ~ Ben Peterson