Introducing FLUTTERBOX

FLUTTERBOX is the musical adventure of Janine Nichols and Neill C. Furio. We began as Split the Lark in January 2006, but then someone else started using the name and refused our challenge to a Lark-Off, which was too bad because it would have been fun ... and we would have won.

Seekers after the silver lining, we elected instead to change our name, especially since a good one was right there in front of us. FLUTTERBOX is a word Neill made up to refer to the 70s FX unit we sometimes run everything through. Like our music, it gives rise to pleasurable notions of sound, place, device, facility, ornithology and more, all of which we encourage.

Janine Nichols, who draws the pictures in the air (as Neill describes the task of all singers), has been called a lot of things, including “arrestingly plaintive” (The Village Voice). Hal Willner has said to her, “There used to be one thing I didn’t like about your singing, but it’s gone now.”

Neill C. Furio, for his part, is an “architecturally cagey” songwriter (The Village Voice) and a "beautifully arch" electric bassist (Nick Cave). He loops on the fly and possesses X-ray hearing.

The FLUTTERBOX repertoire flitters between Neill’s beguiling songs and numbers we wish we had written. You can hear us do “Strange Fruit” every bit as correctly as “I Won’t Grow Up” from Peter Pan, followed by Neill’s actually unforgettable "Whoops Wrong Daisy" or preceded by one or more of his many car songs, perhaps "Safety Last" or "Rust in Peace."