Fiery Furnaces live review
This live review of the Fiery Furnaces is of their gig at Audio, Brighton in November 2007.
The Fiery Furnaces are a strange band. A brother and sister duo, Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger, their music on record is primarily keyboard and guitar based pop, thrown in a blender and spliced with any number of styles, sounds and general weirdness. One album – Rehearsing my choir – even saw them feature their grandmother on lead vocals (although I’m sure its not really her).
The first time I saw them play live back in 2004 it was as a simple 2 piece band, and they were great, there wasn’t a huge complex sound, but there was enough and you could hear the intelligent and amusing lyrics clearly. The second time I saw them, last year, they were not so good. They had replaced the keyboards with metal style guitars. You couldn’t hear Eleanor, let alone understand her. Justifiably, I was a little nervous about this one.
I had nothing to worry about.
Tonight they were a 4 piece, Eleanor on vocals, Matthew sticking to keyboards, one guitarist and a brilliant drummer. Louder and bigger sounding than the first time I saw them, taking rockier elements from the second, but taming them to a manageable level, tonight we saw a band reaching their perfect happy medium. It worked on many levels, blending poppy funk with blowout rock and back to pop, you could dance for a bit, have a rest, dance some more. I felt free tonight.
One effect I’ve noticed of the seeing The Fiery Furnaces on form, is that whoever comes with me ends up buying their albums. Tonight was no exception, I invited a friend who had never heard them before, and by the end of the gig he was a fan. For a band to be able to do that is no mean feat, people often say you need to know the songs to appreciate a band properly live, but this is not the case with The Fiery Furnaces. There are snatches of songs which sound familiar, poppy chord changes, moments of vague recognition. This would normally render a band a bit boring on record, but the layers build up, as soon as you think you have the song down pat, it changes direction. Each time you hear this bands songs, you find new elements.
The bands lyrics are something else entirely, more high end poetry than the normal song lyrics about love you would expect. In case we missed them tonight, the band have a huge backdrop with snippets painted on in various colours. The effect is a psychedelic madness whirling around in your mind. Listen to them yourself:
At the end of the gig we were treated to this medley from their debut, Gallowsbird Park – Don’t Dance it down and Single Again.
They concluded with a twist. First we were going to hear one song, then that got scrapped because the guitarist broke a string, and the band choose a different song, which turned into the big(ish) hit – Tropical Ice Land.
In conclusion, tonight was a great night for all involved. The band are obviously very well rehearsed, the chaos you hear must be timed perfectly for them to pull it off. Here are some seriously talented people, so catch them as soon as possible, before they get bored and do something ridiculous again.
Complete Fiery Furnaces gig from this tour
More gigs can be found over at fabchannel.com
Fiery Furnaces Albums
Gallowsbird’s Park is the debut, its simple but effective. Their most accessible record. An average score of 77% according to Metacritic based on many published reviews, Pitchfork say ‘Plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock ‘n’ roll– airy and thrilling and shifty as hell.’
Bitter Tea is their previous release, and had the metal tour accompanying it. Its a keyboards album though. Pitchfork (again, sorry) say ‘There’s no shortage of direct and heartfelt indie rock that talks about the passion, but nothing else going sounds like the Fiery Furnaces’ carefully considered babble.’ Metacritic found review average to be 69.
Widow City is the latest and heaviest. 71 on Metacritic, Allmusic say ‘Widow City’s major accomplishment is how it captures the band’s live power and sheds some of their mannered studio sound. It rocks hard, and often.’
More Fiery Furnaces
All songs considered have a full Fiery Furnaces gig to download, sadly its of the 2006 tour, which was not so good.
The Fiery Furnaces official website is one of the best I have ever seen from a band. Beautifully laid out, amongst other stuff it has a blog, tour dates, music samples, and a forum.
Hurry along and watch them, the tour continues -
12/8 Brooklyn, NY
12/9 Philadelphia, PA
12/10 Boston, MA
12/11 Montreal, QE
12/12 Toronto, ON
12/13 Detroit, MI
12/14 Chicago, IL
P.S.
One last thing, and aside if you will – the drum kit looked like this:
note the band name Fromz Ferdanind behind the scribble. What does this mean? Eleanor used to date Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, I guess its somehow connected.
Any answers?
Not an answer as such but Eleanor still dates Alex Kapranos. Maybe it’s an in-joke between them?
Anyway thanks for the great review. Also watched the show you referred to on Fabchannel last night and it was fantastic.