Fiery Furnaces at the Fox
Caught the Fiery Furnaces at the Fox Theater in Boulder on 4/22/05. I’m a huge fan of this eclectic brother-sister duo - even naming last year’s masterful Blueberry Boat my #2 album of the year. They play eclectic bluesy rock/pop with nonsensical lyrics and complex song and narrative structures. It sounds complex, and it should. That’s how it sounds. But given enough time, it’s irresistible.
I’d heard rumblings that nothing could really prepare you for the live Fiery Furnaces experience. So I read some concert reviews. Reread some CD reviews. Prepared? Heck yeah. Bring on the rock show.
Okay, fine, I admit it. I was wrong. This was not just a rock show. There were many moments that felt like a John Zorn Naked City concert - rapidly skidding between genres and sounds - or the work of a conceptual improvisation outfit. Simultaneously redefining the nature of song and of the rock concert itself.
A little bit about the show. Live, the Fiery Furnaces are a quartet. Brother-sister Eleanor (vocals) and Matthew (guitar, vocals, keyboards) Friedberger are joined by a drummer and a bass/keyboard player. The stage setting is sparse. A keyboard on stage left and right. Each setup low and unobtrusive. Very clean. The band walks out on stage with no hoopla. Eleanor dedicates the set to someone and they’re off.
The music begins. Immediately we’re struck by Eleanor’s powerful machine-gun delivery. She’s frantically spitting out the lyrics which seemed so childish and fun on the records. Eleanor has become Patti Smith - long black hair in her face - with the robotic post-punk moves of Ian Curtis. The band is loud and distorted. And tight. They play a short segment of a tune from Blueberry Boat over a heavy, bluesy vamp, then they shift gears and play a different song over a different setting. Each section lasts less than a minute. An intensely focused minute. Then they move on to the next section. Occasionally (for no apparent reason), Eleanor announces the name of the current tune: “this tune is Mason City”. They play the tune for 50 seconds and move on to another. Tempo changes. Key changes. Matthew puts down his guitar and sits at the keyboard. This happens fluidly with no stops between sections. And no loss of intensity.
The grand medley, which included songs from Blueberry Boat as well as from their debut Gallowsbird Bark and other singles, goes on for 30-40 minutes. Then Matthew signals something with his guitar and it ends. No grand crescendo or dramatic ritard. Just a signal that this was their last section. Done.
Most critics cite Matthew’s love for The Who’s early rock operas as the inspiration for this concert style. That’s what I was expecting. But that’s a gross simplification. This music was far more conceptual. An experiment in attention spans and macro-improvisation (at the level of the arrangement). I don’t know if the medley was fully rehearsed, but it felt more spontaneous than the prog-rock connotations of The Who’s mini-rock operas. It felt like the band could freely cut-and-paste any section of any song in their repertoire. Mash-up their own material with itself - pairing one of Eleanor’s vocal parts with a completely different setting. All on the fly.
Like Blueberry Boat, initially I was sort of stunned. The recordings allow me to spend a couple (okay, at least 10) listens to come to terms with it all. With the live show, obviously, it’s over in an hour. And it’s gone. Like many a conceptual piece, it sounds fascinating in analysis. But in the live setting, it is sometimes felt physically jarring. The rock’n'roll desire to scream out the lyrics with the singer is denied. In its place we are given a complete reinterpretation of their music. Bob Dylan notoriously denies fans this pleasure by changing the phrasing and ordering of verses. But this was far more spectacular - a complete remix of their entire catalog, mashed-up into a single EP.
Certainly, an understanding of the band’s catalog helps to provide reference points during the show. But in the end, the intellectual exercise of matching a lyric with a familiar song fragment proves too exhausting (and frustrating). It is better to admit defeat and just take in a great rock show, on its own terms. Let its conceptual significance wait for another listening (or maybe the 10th).