Search results
Oct 11, 2007 · Appropriately, when Matt is pressed to describe the Furnaces’ sixth LP, Widow City (Thrill Jockey), the band’s composer and chief lyricist answers in typically elusive fashion. “The record is made up of knick-knackism,” he says.
Apr 7, 2013 · But for me, these centerpiece of the album is the lyricism and Eleanor's singing - the bizarre, unorthodox adventures all over the globe take the Freidberger siblings all over the world, encountering a huge stable of eccentric and devilish characters along the way.
These tracks were made individually by Mathew and Eleanor, resulting in some overlap. These songs have the same lyrics as "I'm Going Away", but consist of completely new instrument and vocal recordings that give a new take on the same material.
- Bitter Tea
- Remember
- I’m Going Away
- Ep
- Widow City
- Rehearsing My Choir
- Gallowsbird’S Bark
- Blueberry Boat
My notes on Bitter Tea include the following: “their difficult album, their David Lynch movie.” Now as at the time of release, Tea confounds so thoroughly that drawing a thematic bead beyond, say, “an exceptional, lovesick EP buried within an impenetrable, drug-damaged LP” is next to impossible. It’s like sitting down to a delicious bowl of Cream O...
The Fiery Furnaces’ approach to live performance was to transform a generous catalog into a strenuous, Naked Lunch-esque exercise, squishing a handful of bars and verses from several songs together, often sacrificing entrenched melodies and cadences and erecting bizarre new creations in the process. Depending on the listener’s temperament — or, pos...
An LP-length “Dear John” letter if there ever was one, I’m Going Away wears its dolor with a characteristic schizophrenia. This means that “Drive To Dallas” breaks up its teary downbeat guide with psychedelic guitar pyro and plaints that verge on mania, and that there are a pair of ecstatic barnburners about partying with a girl named “Charmaine Ch...
A collection of singles and compilation cuts, EP arrives at this point in the countdown almost by default; for all their electrifying zest, no cohesive theme unites these 10 nuggets, and it’s impossible to reconcile them with what’s included on the proper LPs. The ironically autumnal “Here Comes The Summer” is bled, curiously, into the bizarre “Eve...
Widow City is a rock record with synthesizer assists that is very loosely about a libertine who killed (or wants to kill) a loathsome toad of a husband and elope with her girlfriend; the telenovela-esque narrative is unclear in the way that the through line of the Aeon Flux animated series is fuzzy. None of which matters when the result is this ric...
The Grandmother Album, as it is colloquially known, clocks in at about an hour. This is significant. Gallowsbird’s Bark rang up at a respectable 46 minutes and change, pushing the envelope of sonic propriety just slightly; Blueberry Boat ballooned out to 76 minutes but was so captivatingly crackers that nobody noticed. Rehearsing My Choir exists in...
For anyone arriving at Gallowsbird’s Bark after listening to the band’s later records, the raw, primal punch of this debut may come as a shock. Not fully comfortable (as yet) with the notion of the studio-as-instrument, Eleanor and Matthew leaned hard on a whoa-fi, juke-joint spontaneity; spiced with distorted guitar and whimsical keybs, almost eve...
The Fiery Furnaces, at their most transcendent, come across as at least 94 percent disengaged from the here and now. Sonically, narratively, and personally, the ideal versions of Matthew and Eleanor are space aliens or time travelers in self-denial: maybe The Coneheads, the titular family from the first Brady Bunch Movie, or “Unfrozen Caveman Lawye...
- Stereogum
Matt and Eleanor Friedberger have been called many things, from kooky folkies to pop eggheads, but "rock monsters" must be a new tag for them. That, though, was the impression of a night...
Jul 28, 2009 · Their song "The End Is Near" really is about everything coming to an end — the human brain, if not the Earth itself, grinding to a halt: "I might try to reminisce," sings Eleanor. Then she...
People also ask
What lyricism did Eleanor & The Fiery Furnaces have?
Who are the Fiery Furnaces?
How did the Fiery Furnaces perform?
Who did the Fiery Furnaces sign with?
How many albums did the Fiery Furnaces make?
When did the Fiery Furnaces release a second album?
In the six years since Matt and Eleanor Friedberger formed the Fiery Furnaces, their albums and live shows have been hard to pin down and at the very least intriguing endeavors—regardless if they’ve been maligned or obsessed over for their sonic madness.
