During their run in the early years of the 2010s, the band Breakfast in Fur assumed a kind of totemic significance on the streets and in the musical history of New Paltz. Their sturdy and simple indie folk-rock songs were borne along on dense layers of sound design, distressed artfully with electronics and organic experimental sonics like toy rattles and castanets. Punk in its relative disregard for traditional instrumental and vocal technique but lush and complex in its approach to sound and form, their style was synced to larger currents of the period, indie sensibilities that were somewhat alien to those of my post-hippie, jam-loving hometown. For a moment, I once wrote in these pages, the street (for we only really have the one) seemed alive with modern possibility.
In Brooklyn, other urban centers and higher-tuition collegiate scenes, savvy kids more interested in art generally than rock music precisely were reinventing guitar rock, emphasizing aesthetic impact, new ensemble ground rules, pure sound, and a palette of lyrical themes that had been cleansed of rock’s traditional concerns. In the same way that ’70s punk and new wave are often understood as an explicit reaction to the lumbering, corporate qualities of arena rock, so did the indie of the aughts read as a direct response to the stylized angst, dark decadence and de rigueur world-weariness of what alt-rock had become by the late ’90s. It had the self-conscious freshness of a sudden liberation from several decades of rock and roll cliché.
That cultural moment produced bands in the “anyone-can-do-this” communal tradition of punk and bands engaged in the “no-one-can-do-this,” conservatory-groomed complexity of art pop. Breakfast in Fur’s story on that front is mixed—a pair of visual and sound artists teaming up with a couple of jazz studies majors. Like so many bands interested in self-invented worlds, what began in naivete and an experimental willingness that wasn’t waiting for anyone’s permission ended—by stubbornly following its own passions and pathways—in its own kind of musical sophistication. Breakfast in Fur, as I wrote in my review of Flyaway Garden, their 2015 release on the prestigious Bar/None label, made inherently visual music, masterful in its shifting colors and the patient, evolving landscapes and epic scope of its arrangements and DIY production. The only thing keeping it from the pure experimental sound genres was an abiding love of pop and simple song.
To an extent, Breakfast in Fur partook in the pervasive themes of the early 2000s indie sphere—the new innocence, the rejection of jaded irony, the mostly theoretical abdication of identities and communities shaped by social media and marketers. Theirs was an especially graceful and light-touch expression of messaging that, in other hands, could get a little ridiculous, conveniently unaware of its own socioeconomic contradictions. The songs on Flyaway Garden actually tended toward themes of darkness, loss and isolation, but the overall package shared in the zeitgeist of new beginnings and worlds remade by small, community-minded art.
Breakfast in Fur’s twist on the edenic themes of their period came from the sweetest place—a kind of post-9/11 renewal of the transformative power of puppy love. Much of Breakfast in Fur’s beauty stemmed from the fact that this band and this art were born of the insular romantic relationship/creative partnership of guitarist/singer Dan Wolfe and keyboardist/singer/director of graphic design Kaitlin Van Pelt.
Said partnership lives in Kingston now and has a house and a kid, but the beauty lives on and in fact reaches a new level of coherence and clarity on Blue Heaven, Breakfast in Fur’s long-awaited, long-delayed second full-length and third release overall. Blue Heaven releases online and on cassette on Nov. 7, and the band celebrates the release with what is being billed, at least, as a one-off reunion show on Nov. 8 at the new O+ Exchange Clinic and Gallery in Kingston, joined by old friend and frequent bill-mate Shana Falana.
Intended originally as a thematically focused and short-order follow-up to Flyaway Garden by a band in peak form after several years of continuous gigging, Blue Heaven was delayed and nearly derailed by the band’s car accident on their return trip from their South by Southwest festival appearance, by another serious injury to Dan Wolfe in 2017 and a long recovery, and then—insult to injury—by that thing that derailed us all around 2020. “Throughout these challenges,” the release announcement notes, “Breakfast in Fur continued to chip away at Blue Heaven with each setback becoming embedded into the resulting album.” That birth story would seem to suggest a mixed-bag collection fragmented by the conditions of its making, but Blue Heaven really plays as an entirely purposeful and consistent effort.
Blue Heaven is no huge departure from Flyaway Garden (it was never intended to be), but a few developments are immediately apparent. Somewhere in the intervening years, both Wolfe and Van Pelt matured considerably as confident, mix-forward singers while still very much operating in the exposed, vulnerable, non-diva tradition of indie. Years of playing out will do that.
On the lead track and first single, “Heaven,” Van Pelt delivers a buoyant, escalating melody with strength and unaffected simplicity as the underlying arrangement swells toward one of the record’s most genuinely thrilling climaxes. On “Look,” one of several tunes here that hint at dance rock, her vocal finds that elusive sweet spot between pop enthusiasm and the sort of innocence and stylistic indifference associated with indie rock. For his part, Wolfe has discovered a surprising emotional grit in his lower register, especially apparent on the standout, almost gothic track “Points.” The unabashedly hurt acoustic ballad “So Mad” finds Wolfe totally in control of tonal nuance and emotional inflection, as does the epic mood piece “Spirals.” Weirdly, in melody and texture, both of those songs remind me of warped, underwater takes on Enya’s mega hit “Only Time.” I have my doubts that this was intentional.
Before Blue Heaven was recorded, Breakfast in Fur had gone through innumerable personnel changes, with only founding members Wolfe, Van Pelt and legendary New Paltz (now NYC) guitarist/bassist Mike Hollis as constants. Blue Heaven may or may not mark the Breakfast in Fur recording debut of drummer Chris Walker, who drove the band so powerfully through its final few years as a touring live act. A toneful and positively metronomic player upon whom the band’s extravagant sonics hang effortlessly, Walker shines throughout Blue Heaven, but his reins are removed on the album’s centerpiece, the seven-plus-minute epic “Blue,” on which Walker pays tribute in a fashion to the drumming of his hero, Coltrane’s core collaborator Elvin Jones.
As stubbornly patient as ever, Breakfast in Fur remains a band intently concerned with song arcs and the experiential journey of the listener. Even the short songs here feel involving and long. Changes come slowly but with the inevitability of glaciers. Electronic layers rise and subside around strummed acoustic and arpeggiated electric guitars and vocals that range from deeply reverberant to intimate and dry. And the songs deliver the goods.
For the third time in three attempts over a span of 15 years, Breakfast in Fur succeeds in crafting an immersive experience, a record-as-special-place coherence that owes that quality of singularity to the strict application of a mature aesthetic vision. Given that the Nov. 8 show is a one-time thing, I am afraid it’s going to be “goodbye” before we’ve even said “welcome back,” but Blue Heaven is an entirely lovely addition to their legend.
Breakfast in Fur celebrates the release of Blue Heaven with Shana Falana on Saturday, Nov. 8, at the O+ Exchange Clinic and Gallery, 334 Wall St. in Kingston.
Join the family! 
