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The Fiery Furnaces music review
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The Fiery Furnaces Rehearsing My Choir
Rough Trade US
The new Fiery Furnaces album is less rock ‘n roll, more melancholic children’s storybook. Rehearsing My Choir tells the story of brother/sister combo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger’s grandmother, Olga: her youth in Chicago and her time leading a church choir. Olga herself is recruited to share the lead vocal with her granddaughter, which is rarely a vocal at all, but more often a call and answer narration split between the two.
Track listing:
01 The Garfield El
02 The Wayward Granddaughter
03 A Candymaker’s Knife in my Bag
04 We Wrote Letters Everyday
05 Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street
06 Guns Under The Counter
07 Seven Silver Curses
08 Though Let’s Be Fair
09 Slavin’ Away
10 Rehearsing My Choir
11 Does It Remind You of When?
The result is as every bit odd as it sounds.
The Furnaces have never been a typical three-minute pop song band, but with Rehearsing My Choir, they have crossed solidly over into the experimental. It rivals the Velvet Underground at their most radical (think "The Gift" off White Light/White Heat) – owing more to Brian Eno or even John Cage than your average rock band. At times dissonant and frequently atonal, the music dispenses with verse-chorus structure and pop hooks all together. The instrumentation provides a sweeping and ever-changing backdrop for the narrative, conjuring rattling trains, raging jackhammers and wailing choirs from fuzzy guitars and synthed-up keyboards.
The effect is off-putting at first, but this is the kind of album that grows on you more with every listen. As you get used to the quick changes and start to catch on to more of the story, you realize that Rehearsing My Choir is somehow annoying, touching, abrasive and tender all at the same time.
In the end, it’s not great rock ‘n roll, but it is great storytelling.
