The Fiery Furnaces

Claire took a break from her cool job (doing curating work for the Philadelphia Museum of Art) that I'm jealous of (and in no way qualified for) to pull together this playlist covering the music of the Fiery Furnaces. My hunch is that while having art brainz is helpful in appreciating oddball song structure grandma vox weirdo rock, it's not required. So the rest of us should listen up.

As the Fiery Furnaces prepare to release their seventh studio album since 2003, I’m Going Away (Thrill Jockey), on July 21, I thought it a good opportunity to look back on this prolific band’s first four years, comprising five full-length albums, as well as a collection of b-sides and singles worthy of their own full-length (EP, 2005). The Fiery Furnaces also released a live album, Remember, last year, and Matt Friedberger, one half of the band’s brother-sister braintrust (his sister Eleanor is his cohort and foil), released his solo double album, Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School, in 2006. I’m not including any tracks from Remember because The Fiery Furnaces’ live act is so frenetic—an hour-plus medley of songs from their entire catalogue, reworked and overlaid—that I can’t imagine separating out only one or two tracks from such an intricate whole.

The Fiery Furnaces have developed a bit of a reputation for being a difficult band to pin down. Although I hope that this playlist will underscore the occasionally obscured resonances between their albums, nearly every record since their rollicking 2003 debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark, has taken a radically different conceptual bent from the album before it. 2004’s Blueberry Boat remains Friedberger and Friedberger’s magnum opus. It’s the most dense of their albums, with several tracks clocking in at three times the length of the typical three-minute pop song, and complex narratives and characters in each song, some of which pass through several increasingly baroque movements in the development of these tales, such as the potential fratricide of “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” and the battle against pirates in the album’s title track. Their follow-up, 2005’s Rehearsing My Choir, was even more challenging, pairing Eleanor’s vocals with those of the Friedbergers’ grandmother on pseudo-biographical songs that seemed even more ramshackle at times than the mini-rock operas of Blueberry Boat. The excellent, although less concept-driven EP (2005) collected the band’s poppier b-sides and rarities and proved a harbinger of things to come, as both Bitter Tea (2006) and Widow City (2007) have culled the depths of 70s and 80s radio (with the occasional old-timey digression) for more cohesive, beat and riff-driven songs, and we are left to wonder where the Friedbergers will go from here. “Like all the Fiery Furnaces' other albums,” the band promises, “I'm Going Away sounds different than all The Fiery Furnaces' other albums.” They’re playing a few dates on the East Coast in June, a month before the release of the album, and while the songs won’t sound anything like the records, live might be the best introductory experience to the band, as their uber-mix will surely dwarf my fifteen-track attempt here.

1) Sweet Spots / EP / 2005
2) Blueberry Boat / Blueberry Boat / 2004
3) Evergreen / Single Again single / 2004)
4) I’m Gonna Run / Gallowsbird’s Bark / 2003)
5) The Wayward Granddaughter / Rehearsing My Choir / 2005
6) My Egyptian Grammar / Widow City / 2007
7) Here Comes the Summer / EP / 2005
8) Quay Cur / Blueberry Boat / 2004
9) Automatic Husband / Widow City / 2007
10) Single Again / Single Again single / 2004
11) Crystal Clear / Gallowsbird’s Bark / 2003
12) Oh Sweet Woods / Bitter Tea / 2006
13) Chief Inspector Blancheflower / Blueberry Boat / 2004
14) Tropical-Iceland (remix) / EP / 2005
15) Benton Harbor Blues / Bitter Tea / 2006

Total Time: 76:25. YAHPLAY FOUL!!! Disqualified (from nothing) for exceeding the 74 minute time limit. Rulz, rulz, rulz...