Stand By Your Band
The Fiery Furnaces
Rehearsing My Choir (Rough Trade)
If you are a faithful reader of Backfield in Motion, it should be painfully obvious that I am infatuated with Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger, hereafter referred to as The Fiery Furnaces. Reviewing their music would be like critiquing my mother's home cooked meal. It's never bad and to find fault would be blasphemous. It's so far from my mind that the vaunted duo could wrong me. Love is blind, sometimes deaf, and that's the way it is.
It has come to my attention that not everyone is like me. The general public does not share the same unconditional love I have for the Furnaces. Some people have never cracked that shell, and some will undoubtedly be turned off sooner or later. And yesterday I broke a cardinal rule of mine: Never read a Pitchfork review before you've written one yourself. I rationalize that I've been steeped in Rehearsing My Choir for well over a month and a half, that it wouldn't influence or get a rise out of me. Pitchforker Amanda Petrusich dropped an anvil of a 4.0 rating on the album. I wished she had just kicked me in the Charlie Browns and stole my juicebox.
Now yes, my bias is high and perhaps my threshold higher, but what was surprising is that I, at points, agreed with Ms. Petrusich's review. But a 4.0? Come on!
I think I'm now officially influenced.
While it would be all too easy to play the "Art for Art's Sake" card here, frankly, I don't believe it wholeheartedly. The Fiery Furnaces at the base is a pop band, a rock and roll outfit which makes it all the more remarkable what they've achieved with Rehearsing My Choir. They've pushed limits of what can be experimental and remain pop music. Naysayers will be quick to say I'm flatout wrong. The album lacks any semblance of a melody. The spoken word is grating. The maniacal, aprupt changes hinders any sort of flow. Hello? Hear Blueberry Boat recently?
That's not fair. Blueberry Boat is exceptional, and at times Rehearsing My Choir can be quirky to say the least. But the model is the same, only with an assload of more ambition. Matthew presents a melting pot of styles: proggy landscapes, Randy Newman style piano bits, disco beats, exotic percussions, ragtime and Dylan-ish folk nods and the almost forgotten garage rock. You don't have to even that listen closely to hear the synth hooks, the melodic tickling of the ivories or vintage Furnace guitar riffage. It's there; I promise.
It really all comes down to the presence of Olga Sarantos, and OH! what a presence it is. The Friedberger's grandmother's spoken-word narrative acts as the most intriguing chip brought to the table and at the same time, the biggest roadblock for many listeners. Sarantos' voice is heavy and unsettling, androgynous and Bea Arthur-esque. The weathered quality of Sarantos' narration gives the story a great sense of weight and legitimacy. The story itself is engaging and dramatic, presented appropriately by Matthew's theatrical and at times extremely literal arrangement (ie buzz sawing guitars for construction in "Does It Remind You of When" and the ominous organ for the Archibishop's arrival in title track "Rehearshing My Choir"). It's full of re-emerging thematic piano parts representing various life moments. Sarantos' gruff delivery is perfect for Matthew's mouthfuls of uber-descriptive words and there is a great sense of history.
Unfortunately, it won't help my argument to say the best offering is the almost Granny-free, nearly disconnected to the mainline "The Wayfaring Granddaughter". Dark synths pepper a thumping disco drum track, and Eleanor contrastly gives a subtler, gentler vocal, save for a brilliant return to old form in describing "two Kevins": "When they met at Joey Meyer's Red White and Blue Demon basketball seminar tutorial clinic day care camp/for underprivileged kids and overstimulated brats/And they were both wearing vintage throwback 45 dollar 1983 White Sox hats/and now at HF, point guard and shooting guard" (and check the rambling of "Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street" for some delectible treats). Needless to say, I creamed. This "new" classy, pretty-voiced Eleanor is revisted in Slavin' Away", a sad, tender, and unbelieveably tuneful mourn of a hardworking, underappreciated wife.
When it all boils down, The Fiery Furnaces can pull a Barney and Kako and record themselves belching and counting for 78 minutes and I'll still lap it up like the brainless, obiedient dog I have come to be for them. I won't deny that. Nonetheless, Rehearsing My Choir stands as a piece of work so original and amazing, and whether you like it or not, some of it is catchy. Don't pretend it's not there. Of course, you're still free to hate it. In fact, I'm implore you to hate it. Follow the Pitchfork shepards! I might finally get a little QT with my love, a love that I've shared far much.
The Fiery Furnaces: http://www.thefieryfurnaces.com
2 Comments:
I completely disagree with you that Olga is the difference. I think if you took what she did on this album and threw it on Blueberry Boat it would still be a good album, and this one would still fall short. The difference is in the songs themselves. They simply crossed the line of what is listenable and what is grating. The tunes on blueberry boat had structure, and once you listened to them enough to "get it", the songs were simple pop songs. These songs don't transform themselves over time, they just stay broken. Listening to this album is like doing homework; you know it's good for you but that doesn't make it any more fun.
the first time I heard RMC, i did think it was out there but for the same reasons I thought blueberry boat was out there. it's seemingly broken and frenetic when you can't follow what's next. not once did I find the music to be unlistenable or the least bit grating. There are tons of tiny melodies to appreciate. I don't know if you've ever heard the album track 1 to track 11, but to me, even with the bouncy narrative, the whole album is like a 60 minute rambling song, similar to any story an old grandmother would tell. and it makes sense. it never had to transform over time or start gluing itself together, because it was already like that when I got it. so much so as I found I don't like listening to tracks by themselves or out of order. today, I tried to discern what the problematic parts are and I honestly could not do it. I found myself doing air piano, air drums, air guitar, air anything and getting completely lost. maybe it's because it's so familiar to me now, I don't know. It's really a shame we don't agree here.
to me, listening to this is like watching a Jean Pierre Jeunet film on growing up in the the early 20th century. It's whimiscal, weird, dramatic and full of exuberance. and i simply don't understand how it can be seen any other way.
different strokes for different folks I suppose.
ps you're out of the band.
Post a Comment
<< Home