NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN:Record Reviews: THE FIERY FURNACES

THE FIERY FURNACES
REHEARSING MY CHOIR

THE FIERY FURNACES
REHEARSING MY CHOIR
Rough Trade 2005

As critics grope in vein for another Gallowsbird Bark, The Fiery Furnaces have once again entered uncharted territory with what is perhaps their most ambitious work to date, Rehearsing My Choir.

When the Furnaces signed their record deal a couple of years back, I told them that their new song, “Tropical Iceland,” sounded like ad music. It’s syrupy melody, standard harmonies, and overall harmless sound made me wonder if they were on their way to a hasty sell-out. As we’ve seen with Blueberry Boat and particularly here on Rehearsing My Choir, the Friedbergers have done quite the opposite. As they become more popular their music becomes more challenging, dissonant, experimental, and, generally speaking - more esoteric. As someone like the Animal Collective, who began as a more difficult listen, gets props from everybody including myself for cleaning up their act, The Furnaces are reprimanded like bad schoolchildren for deviating from the rules. While the critics can’t come out like labels and bluntly ask, “Where’s the hit?,” they CAN ask, “Isn’t this a bit pretentious?” “Self-indulgent?” “Gimmicky?” I think that one of the reviews even labeled them “too clever for their own good.”

Maybe you should approach the duo the way you would an adventurous chef. His menu will change. But if you’re open minded and give each new concoction a moment or two, you'll find creativity, craftsmanship, and flavor. Could it be that we've reached a point in which the culinary world prizes experimentation more than the music world? Perhaps I'll follow that bizarre rant in a later issue.

But for now, I give the siblings points not only for taking the risk to execute a project of this nature, but also the artistic focus required to follow such a complex idea to its conclusion. Any musician worth a damn has fantasized at least once or twice about getting their older relatives into the studio - and I know a few who have made it a reality - but never have I seen anyone carry anything like this to these heights. There’s nothing less "hip," "happening," or "now," in this pop/youth-fixated cultural climate (and I'm not merely referring to the mainstream), than offering complicated music that focuses on a grandmother. And I don’t think the Friedbergers were being cute.

They’re for real. And their new record is damn good.

If you’re not familiar already, Rehearsing My Choir is centered on the siblings’ octogenarian grandmother, Olga Sarantos. The album not only skips back and forth between various chapters of her life, but also features her voice as well. Spanning the 1920s to the 1990s, the portrait acquires extra dimension by touching on everything from the mundane to the momentous - from donuts to death. Imagine those stories you heard your grandparents repeat – recalling old neighborhoods, family incidents, old love, watching you grow up – and combine that with exhaustive conversations about – say - a trip to the store…and put to really whacked-out music.

Unlike typical artistic depictions of grandmothers, Olga is neither trivialized nor sentimentalized here but dealt with from the Furnaces’ typically detached air. Though they do quite a bit sonically and lyrically to alienate themselves and the listener from the inherent emotional circumstance of a protagonist looking back across a long and eventful life, their audio portrait is not without an inevitable touch of nostalgic romanticism.

Lets just call Rehearsing My Choir a Brechtian prog-rock approach to Studs Terkel filtered through some good old-fashioned familial intimacy. Matt’s ever-modulating time-changing harmonically-complex music, often incongruous with the action, insures that one is never long lost in a moment - and fully aware of process. The story is told in first person narration by both Olga and Eleanor – Eleanor playing the younger Olga and also sometimes herself and perhaps others as well. The unusual chronological order, extreme musical variation, and alternation of narrators keeps the listener outside of the story and paying enough attention to become the siblings' collaborator in piecing their grandmother’s story together.

From the time Olga jumps into “The Garfield El” you are struck by the extraordinary tone of her voice – it’s sort of like a female Burroughs – demanding that her late train turn into her lost love. The semi-suite “The Wayfaring Granddaughter” contains a great passage in which Olga kvetches about fifteen-year-old Eleanor dying her beautiful red-brown hair black. When they remember that Eleanor dated two Kevins, Olga says, “You mean two jerks.” “A Candymaker’s Knife” is Olga’s bizarre account of losing control after getting drunk on zombies on her way to meet her father-in-law for the first time. Other highlights include Olga discussing the times when every store in Chicago had “Guns Under the Counter,” a visit to the fortune-teller in “Seven Silver Curses,” and the death of her husband in “Does It Remind You of When.” This is not your average record.

What kind of music would you create to compliment your grandmother’s stories?

Rehearsing My Choir drifts from ambient, electro-pop, early-Devo synth weirdness, piano balladry, tense folk strumming, nursery rhyme-style chants, and even a few moments of distorted rocking out. The song structures are unconventional cut-and-paste. Overall it shares more in common with modernist classical and theatrical music than it does experimental rock. Olga approaches her lines from a a conversational music hall meets Sprechstimme angle – which provides a perfect compliment/contrast for Eleanor’s fluid pop honey. When Olga makes everything a bit harsh around the edges, Eleanor comes in to sooth it. Eleanor voice gets fuller, more nuanced, and more tasteful with each new record. Her all-too-brief work here is evidence that she’s currently one of the best vocalists in rock. As for Matt, his compositions are becoming more interesting and sophisticated than ever.

This unapologetic cryptogram has completely rocked my world. I laughed. I cried. Seriously. I am quite positive that restless creativity of The Furnaces will continue to defy the expectations of all - except for those who expect something new each time. Maybe this will be the progenitor of a new genre of family recordings. Doesn’t your Uncle Vic need a solo album? Seriously once more - you should give this a listen….