The Fiery Furnaces Head To Widow City
And bring the quirkiness with them.
The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City
Released on Nov 30, -0001
When pressed recently to describe the latest Fiery Furnaces album, Widow City, Matt Friedberger said, "The record is made up of knick-knackism. Wondering and wandering with the Ouija, although I was too poor to afford a real Ouija board, and messages (that came) from moldy and mouse-masticated magazines from old people's houses." The statement; cryptic, dry and warped, or possibly the musings of someone overly impressed with their own oddities, who knows?
I've always had a love/hate relationship with the music of Brooklyn's The Fiery Furnaces. Love, because most of their listenable songs remind me of making music with my older sister when I was a child. Our songs consisted of pre-adolescent observations and non-sensible lyrics, too. The hate element with The Fiery Furnaces is their unwavering ability to produce some of the most un-listenable Yoko Ono like album filler of our generation. That being said, Widow City contains the most listenable tracks I've ever heard from the Friedberger siblings.
“Duplexes Of The Dead? is a trancy Moog-horned out groover complemented by the bombast of Zeppelin-esque drums, while "My Egyptian Grammar? could have very well ended up on Lily Allen's next album. It possesses that gentle "walk in the park" style we have all come to enjoy.
Opening track, “Philadelphia Grand Jury,? is typical Fiery Furnaces gone insane. At various points through out the song, one will feel the need to scream out, "Would you make up your mind already!"
It can take a great deal of patience to allow The Fiery Furnaces to take new listeners on their trip. Speaking to Magnet, Eleanor said, "I genuinely don't think that we make weird music. It's not about wanting mainstream success or selling more records, we'd love to sell more records, but we're not gonna change out taste. We hope other people will change theirs."
It would be nice to see The Fiery Furnaces make an album of straight ahead pop songs one day. They are more than capable of that task.
High Point
Low Point
Posted by Joe Roth on Oct 30, 2007 @ 12:00 am