YIKES.
That's my one-word summation of the music made by The Fiery Furnaces. I could think of a lot of other words to describe it, among them "complex", "whimsical", "brilliant", "irritating", "childlike", "attention-deficit", "scatterbrained", and "bizarre", and those would all be fitting at different moments, but out of all of my possible descriptions, "YIKES" seems to be the most fitting. Why is that? Well, it's simply because their sophomore album, Blueberry Boat is a formidable piece of work that doesn't seem to get much less formidable as I familiarize myself with it. Albums that are difficult to listen to tend to also be difficult to review. So I could be in for a long one here. Fasten your seatbelts, everyone.
I suppose I could start with the basics, to give you a grasp on this extremely weird band. The Fiery Furnaces, as a band, is essentially comprised of two members - Eleanor Friedberger and her brother Matthew Friedberger. Together, they make a rather schizophrenic brand of music comprised of bright piano, vintage synthesizers, nervous and sometimes bluesy guitar noodling, throbbing electronics, and constantly changing tempos. One might be tempted to call-it "prog rock" just from reading this description, but it doesn't sound anything like what I'm used to for that genre, so that label won't really work. There's a very theatrical element to it that places the Furnaces' music closer to the genre of musical theatre. That's normally something that I dislike - something inside me wants to either watch a play or enjoy the music at a concert, and not both at the same time. But what Eleanor and Matthew have come up with here is sort of like a bunch of disjointed narrative sections from a musical, and for the most part, I think it's an intriguing way to make music. Songs, which often start off with one musical motif and central theme, can morph into something entirely different at the drop of a hat, sometimes coming full circle and bringing the various disjointed pieces together, and sometimes wandering off to the point where a song ends as a completely different entity from when it began.
It's a confusing mixture, one that would leave the listener to assume that Blueberry Boat had 30 or 40 songs instead of 13, if they were prevented from looking at the track numbers on their LCD display. Honestly, the last band I can remember hearing that took as much of a kitchen-sink approach to making music was Havalina Rail Co. back in 1996, and they operated within an entirely different cluster of genres than The Fiery Furnaces seem to.
OK, that was not an easy description to write. This is clearly not going to be an easy review. I could easily get lost in the nooks and crannies of Blueberry Boat's good and bad sections, and everything in between, describing the ever-changing details, for days before ever finishing such a review. And I really don't want to do that, nor do I think anyone wants to read it, so I'll do my best to be concise and leave some surprises for the adventurous listeners whose interests in something like this might get piqued. Blueberry Boat is an adventurous, imaginative, but at times extremely infuriating bit of musical storytelling. At times it boils over with creative delirium, its manic changes in style and mood working to the benefit of its psychotic wonderland. At other times, it can seem like a poorly-conceived assault on the eardrums with swamps of aural drudgery to wade through in between the noisier moments. The stories themselves are something humorous, sometimes childlike in their nature, and sometimes completely incompressible. The more vocally plainspoken Matt takes a bit of a backseat to his sister Eleanor, whose brand of chirpy speak-singing can sometimes be lovely in its own quirky way, and can sometimes be too much to handle. Often times, they trade off during the different sections of a single song, playing different roles opposite each other as if auditioning for some sort of intergalactic off-Broadway production.
It's practically impossible to nail down a specific feeling about this thing, because I love the album one moment and hate it the next, so in the end, I guess I'm coming out in between. It's worth a try - but proceed with caution, and listen many times before even beginning to pass judgment, if at all possible.
OK, are we ready to dive deeper? Let's open up this boat's engine and see what she's got inside!
Quay Cur
A looby, a lordant, a lagerhead, lozel
A lungio lathback made me a proposal
Straight sail, top mast, astrolabe prospected
Down in his dry dock, erected infected...
You know how most artists would start off an album with one of their most accessible tracks, as if to say, "If you like this one, you'll love the album!" Well, The Fiery Furnaces do the opposite, opting to lead off with their longest and most unwieldy song, effectively saying, "If you don't like this, then you'll hate this album." Consider it the "guard dog" of the album, if you will - to listen to this is to run a gauntlet of video game-like electronic thumping, Eleanor's sing-songy melody set against an unsettling, repetitive chord progression, sudden jumps to nonsensical guitar and vocal parts from Matt, a central synthetic dirge, a section during which Eleanor sings in Inuit... yeah, Inuit. If that isn't enough to completely bewilder you, you're not paying attention. Contending with all of this isn't something that I find to be a chore, personally, because the whimsical nature of it all is kind of thrilling to me. It's the sudden tempo shifts, and the fact that the song has this slow, sagging part in the middle despite setting up some good momentum in the beginning, that get to me. Still, I can appreciate the child-like story being told, of a young girl who lost a precious locket and is trying to recover it, and there is actually an identifiable chorus in which Eleanor laments "And now I'll never, never, never feel like I am safe again". With repeated listens, there are little musical motifs that sort of link the disparate movements to one another, and when Eleanor and Matt are singing completely different lyrics over one another at the end, it kind of comes full circle. It's a bit much at ten minutes and counting, but you've gotta admit that these siblings have incredibly active imaginations.
Straight Street
My boss the head of sales for Western Asia
Said you'll get fired if your opposite from Nokia plays ya...
One of the more conventional (!) rock tracks on the album revolves around a very jittery, swingy piano melody, accompanied by drums and guitars when those instruments feel like joining in. You see, sometimes we get drums, sometimes hand claps, and sometimes nothing, and as far as the guitars go, they sound like they're being played by Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead after drinking about ten cappuccinos. It's a pretty spazzed-out song overall, with Eleanor barely catching her breath in between the rushed lyrics, which sound like they're describing an episode of The Apprentice that came straight from hell. The mad rush of big business overtakes her as she struggles to meet her quota in cellular phone sales. Listen for a lot of oddball, clever rhymes - one of this band's favorite lyrical tricks is to take a proper name, such as a city or person, and pair it with an unexpected rhyme. It's not unlike what rappers do, except I'm sure that it's for comedic effect here. The song is tied together by a slow, jaunty chorus which inexplicably tells us, "So I walked up the length of the street they call straight, cursing myself... 'causeIgottheretoolate". Warped synths and creepy, bent strings take the place of the guitars at various points during the five minutes of the song - and yet, this is still probably the most single-worthy song on the disc. (Not that The Fiery Furnaces need to bother with such things, of course.)
Blueberry Boat
You see, I'm from Grand Rapids, and up my way
We grow the best blueberries in the U.S. of A.
And when we pull into old H.K.
The little markets'll have something special next day...
As far as epic storytelling goes, the title track is this band's finest hour. Spinning an odd tale that has to have been ripped from a child's storybook, Eleanor plays the role of a ship's captain, who takes great pride in her cargo of fresh blueberries that she is delivering across the Pacific Ocean. (This is the second song in a row that makes reference to cities in the Orient, so I have to wonder if that's an area of the world that the siblings are particularly enamored with.) From the delirious, bouncing synthesizers at the beginning of the song, which make me think of tiny rubber balls, to the ominous tiptoeing piano during a climactic section of the song, to the discordant piano near the end that seems to describe the captain's fate, the music manages to seem more purposeful than random, even though it switches around quite a bit. Matt plays a pirate who attacks Eleanor's ship and demands that she hand over her precious cargo - the interplay between the two of them and the music makes it easy to picture this as a scene in the musical. I suppose it might not be entirely appropriate for the kiddos due to Eleanor telling her shipmates to "switch off the porn, 'cause there's nothing that's dirty about the ocean in the morn" at one point, and the rather depressing outcome of the battle, but that doesn't stop the song from making me feel like I'm nine years old all over again, staying up well past my bedtime and whispering to my five-year-old little brother in the bunk below me as we made up weird stories to entertain ourselves when we couldn't sleep.
Chris Michaels
My baby's got a stick stuck out her beak
My baby takes a drink out of the leak
My baby's got a blue-green sweater
And a nest down by the creek...
While this song starts off as more of a typical, 60's era rock number, which ain't a bad thing, it rapidly deteriorates into one of the album's more irritating failures. Part of the problem here is that, while the various characters introduced and the interplay between them can be amusing, high school gossip doesn't make for as interesting a setting as the more otherworldly stories told in the previous songs. It's very easy to get annoyed with the various characters bickering here, especially when it's done against Matt's schizophrenic, guitar-driven middle section that can't seem to make up its mind about its tempo. Some parts are amusing, such as the odd bird-related gibberish Matt spouts off earlier on, or the electronic noises that sound like clattering tin cans, which emerge later on during one of Eleanor's more manic episodes. Despite the changing song dynamics, this song begins to feel long and boring after a few minutes, and you just want to slap the characters silly for their spiteful remarks against one another (the words "b*tch" and "wh*re" are used). Basically, this track takes a long time to go nowhere.
Paw Paw Tree
At last when the choice was neither nor
Bottom of the bay, we're set ashore
Went into town, beg what we lack
200 stripes on horseback...
The beginning of this track sounds like something an electronic act like Aphex Twin might try - rather random percussive noise and slow, rhythmic bass rumbling that eventually build a framework for the song. Eventually real drums join in and the guitar starts to wheeze out a melody - the band seems to have a thing for running it through filters in an attempt to make it sound as skuzzy as possible. Despite the all-over-the-place, psycho-blues influenced guitar parts, this song actually maintains its rhythm for its entire length, though it's a slow rhythm and the song is another case of building up to pretty much nothing. I can't make much sense out of the lyrics one way or another - they have a bit of a "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" sort of thing going on, though I don't know if The Fiery Furnaces' music is at all drug-influenced. (The music is the drug, if you ask me.) There is a reference to "The King of Spain" that may be an intentional link to a later song - every now and then I do notice a theme popping up that seems to have something in common with an entirely different lyric that I can't remember the placement of on the record.
My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found
I went to the DQ, 'cause I thought I might see you
I went to the Super K, have you seen any recent stray?
"Paw Paw Tree" cuts very suddenly into this fun little ditty about just what it says it's about - Eleanor's dog. She was mean to the poor guy, he ran off, and now she's singing, in a rather cheery tone of voice, about all of the places she's visiting around town in her attempt to find the poor mutt. Much like "Straight Street", Eleanor is barking out the lyrics (pun intended) rather rapidly, though the piano-driven, old-time Gospel nature of the music slows down later and gets augmented by a zipping and thumping electronic beat, which makes for a cool juxtaposition of sounds. Puns and overall silliness are the driving force behind the lyrics - at one point, the drums even respond to one of Eleanor's puns with a rimshot! Of course, the entire song is based on a silly pun which is kind of given away by the title, but it's cute nonetheless when Eleanor finally finds her pup.
Mason City
If the Dunlay heirs cannot be seen to care
Then the Banker's Trust will surely think it fair
To not give extensions, as they mustn't dare...
This might just be the best song ever written about insurance. Alright, so there isn't much competition in that department, and that doesn't mean that this is such a great song. It has its moments - the little synth fanfare at the beginning is fun, as are the handclap rhythm behind Eleanor's verses and the psycho guitar parts we've come to expect. (If anything, The Fiery Furnaces are starting to become paradoxically predictable, and we're only halfway through the album.) Eleanor appears to be playing the role of an insurance agent (her lyrics about corporate life are some of her most strangely amusing), which is fine enough until a completely out-of-synch drumbeat interrupts her and she suddenly cuts off to give Matt a chance to sing. It sounds like two completely different songs that just happen to overlap for a few seconds, and Matt's part is one of the most long and boring stretches on the album. He's telling people to take different trains "for Christ's sake", and it kind of degenerates into uninteresting nonsense from there. (I say "uninteresting" because the band has already shown us there's such a thing as "interesting nonsense".) The drum and synth parts start to get more psychedelic and eventually Eleanor joins in again, though she's singing and mumbling about the lowest forms of life and all manner of made-up words that make her seem like she's trying way too hard to be clever. The song eventually falls apart with one of the album's more unpleasant bouts of squealing guitar.
Chief Inspector Blancheflower
I had a dexadrine hyperactivity selective
Attend to relevant information, tempo taken in
Told to mechanism coping concept
Put my head down, crumple my paper...
I love the intro to this one. It's off-key and off-rhythm, and it makes no apologies for it, but something about Matt's attention-deficit singing, complete with a recurring melody line that sounds exactly like little kids when they go "Nyah nyah, nyah nyah nyah!" to one another, seems oddly appropriate against the blurping synths and vintage programmed hand-clapping. I could, like, play an Atari game to this music. Matt is singing about having A.D.D. or something in his childhood and not doing well in school. This eventually falls apart, leaving us with some incomprehensible mumbling and a sudden decision to join the police force, which is where Eleanor picks up with another bright and sunny musical section just in the nick of time. The synths positively glow around her, and she sets up the main story of the song, playing the role of a girl being fought over by two brothers. Matt plays the role of both brothers, which is entertaining when he's basically responding to his own questions and telling a troubled sibling, "You can tell me anything you want, 'cept 'I started seeing Jenny'." Then, of course, comes the inevitable response: "I started seeing Jenny." An argument ensues, first between the brothers, and then between Matt and Eleanor, and it ends up rather unresolved, moving into a somewhat rock-opera-tinged guitar solo that gets eaten up by spacy electronic noises.
Spaniolated
Learned me the rosary and made me pray to Santiago
I wish, I wish I was back in Chicago...
The synth and piano intro to this song is kind of neat, but the song itself is scattershot. Warped acoustic guitars refuse to commit themselves to a singular tempo here, which drives me rather nutty as Eleanor attempts to describe her life as a research volunteer who was kidnapped and brought to Spain. Um, okay... The chorus simply (and very slowly) states, over crashing drums, "The pain, the pain, in Spain, falls mainly on me." And that's pretty much it - a few repetitions and a cute accordion part, and we're all done. Actually, from here on out, the songs are all relatively short, which is a bit of a relief after misfired epics like "Chris Michaels" and "Mason City".
1917
The happy Hun Felsch sure likes his blond beer
And I like his doubles, so much I might even cheer...
OK, so the whole "wacked-out intro with random synth blurps" thing doesn't work as well this time. Squiggling strings have the effect of nails on a chalkboard as Matt sings along with a rhythm that is only playing in his head while the rest of the band does pretty much whatever the hell they want here. This is by far the album's most irritating moment, and thankfully it only lasts a few minutes before the song is interrupted by a slow, steady anthem that simply repeats "Go ask Dad, why can't we ever win, ever win once?" There's a certain sadness to the melody and it sounds like it'd be a meaningful ending to some other musical epic, but played here, it's completely out of place and the whole song is botched. YIKES!
Birdie Brain
I've been told the Bronx River stream
On moonlit nights is meant to seem
Like the Rhone in a glacier icy dream
But then in a poof, it's sulfur steam...
While the synths have managed to annoy me on the last few songs, the melodic intro they pull out here is nothing short of beautiful (and appropriately, somewhat like the sound of a bird singing). This sets the stage for a playfully weird song that once again taps into a vivid imagination and a more conventional song structure (not saying they always have to have conventional song structures, but they've clearly shown that ditching structure just for the sake of ditching structure can become a crippling constraint in and of itself). Squishing percussion and a lightly bouncy rhythm join forces to get us all singing along as Eleanor tells us about the woes wrought upon her by modern technology - things like the steam train, the aer-e-o-plane, and the livery car. She claims that they drive her and her many dogs insane, and her response to this is to say that she'll stop riding side saddle, and even drown herself, if they don't cut out the racket. It's so idiotic that one just has to laugh. Again, it's be a great kids' song if not for the suicide (and the phrase "damnable diesel"), but as it is, it's deliciously demented.
Turning Round
Catamaran Man, you're my cousin, you're my blood
You're ten feet tall...
The album's short song plays as if it were a melodic coda to "Birdie Brain", keeping the same key and tempo and gently singing to what sounds like a homeless guy who imagines that he is operating a catamaran. There are very few lyrics here, just the steady presence of bass, organ and piano to help the melody float along until the song eventually draws to a gentle close.
Wolfnotes
I rub the peg-paste and the chalk in
Scrape and the wolfnotes start to grrr
I did a donkey's back with fixed frog
And I martellato the slur...
One last "thunk" on the piano marks a sudden transition into - you guessed it - more randomly flitting-about synthesizers. The band's shtick has gotten unfortunately repetitive at this point, but thankfully, the effect isn't as bothersome here. Appropriately, Eleanor is encouraging us to turn our radios off, take out our pretend instruments, and make some music of our own. That could serve as an overall theme for the band because they've definitely got that cartoonish, childlike vibe to most of their songs. Once Matt starts to sing in the song's slower section, the lyrics, which are supposedly about warming up for a performance and adjusting one's instruments, seem to have an ominous double entendres behind them. Maybe I'm reading too much into statements like "She varnished all around the F-holes" and "Screw my G on up to B flat", but anyway, maybe I just shouldn't go there. The song - and thankfully, the album (which isn't all bad by any means, but certainly a lot to take in a single sitting), ends with a graceful organ interlude and the sudden sound of synths blowing up and fizzling out, kind of like something you'd expect to hear if you got shot in an old video game and the screen was disintegrating before your eyes, pixel by pixel.
Confused? I'm assuming that you were supposed to be long before this point, so that's no real surprise. If you get some sort of demented enjoyment from it all (which I do, in the long run), then The Fiery Furnaces have done their job. And if you can't get enough of the insanity, I've heard that their concerts jump back and forth between sections of their various songs, placing them in completely new contexts with completely unexpected transitions - sounds like a behemoth performance if ever there was one! Clearly, Matt and Eleanor are brimming over with ideas, and they haven't quite figured out how to solidify them into a masterpiece yet. But hey, that's just the opinion of one man who has difficulty swallowing certain combinations of those ideas as presented on Blueberry Boat. You may love the album, or you may hate it, and it's tough to guarantee an outcome before you listen to this thing for yourself. But if you're feeling adventurous, I'd say look for a used copy and give it a spin. Even if you find three or four songs worth keeping, that could end up being a large chunk of the album. It's your gamble, I guess. I'm going with a marginal recommendation on this one, and I'll see if this year's EP (no really, that's what it's called even though it's the length of a normal album), which is purported to contain some slightly more structured songs, has to offer that might have missed the boat this time around.
ALBUM WORTH:
Quay Cur $1
Straight Street $1.50
Blueberry Boat $1.50
Chris Michaels -$.50
Paw Paw Tree $0
My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found $1.50
Mason City $0
Chief Inspector Blancheflower $1
Spaniolated $0
1917 -$.50
Birdie Brain $1.50
Turning Round $.50
Wolfnotes $.50
TOTAL: $8
Band Members:
Eleanor Friedberger: Lead vocals, guitar
Matt Friedberger: Vocals, guitar, piano, synth, organ
Toshi Yano: Bass, synthesizer
Andy Knowles: Drums
Website: http://www.thefieryfurnaces.com
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