On TEA TORNADO, Marmoset's collision of super-simple melodies and cryptic charm remained as mysterious as ever, though the oddness is slightly downplayed. The sprightly, snotty "Written Today," "Hallway"'s Anglophile garage rock, and the darkly catchy "Come with Me" are all remarkably direct, providing guideposts for the stranger moments that inevitably follow. A fruit motif runs through some of the album's best songs, if only tangentially -- "Strawberry Shortcakes"' irresistible start-and-stop bassline and vaguely threatening singsong vocals make it a quintessential Marmoset song. On "Peach Cobbler," Whittaker seems to boil longing down to its purest essence, singing "You are pretty, you are strong and you are funny" before slipping into absurdity: "And I am the boy who found you/And turned it into peach cobbler." He sounds just as devoted on the chiming "You, Blueberry Muffin." Yet not all of TEA TORNADO's weirdness is writ large. "Toy" and "Gretchen" are whispery yet angular, with just enough strangeness to keep from disappearing entirely. A decade into the band's career, Marmoset was still an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in mystery.
