from the vaults, vol. 11.

The Fiery Furnaces – Widow City (2007)

the fiery furnaces are the kind of band that, in an ideal world, would be everyone’s favourite band. matthew and eleanor friedberger, siblings, have been making the oddest, whackiest pop music since 2003’s gallowsbird’s bark. the whole prog-pop thing they’re sort of famous for only started on the next year’s blueberry boat, though: an album of weird but addictive, synth-y long songs that change direction every 30 seconds.

combine this with eleanor’s deranged warbling about dancing naked at the court of the sultan, being carried off to decorate bordellos, emergency cigarettes behind glass, having a steam train-o-phobia, and mormons kidnapping her because she’s their leader’s great-granddaughter, and we have a winner.

widow city, the furnaces’ fifth album, was supposed to be their ‘classic rock’ album. yeah, whatever. they already made a ’synthpop’ album that didn’t sound all that different from what they usually do, and a ‘grandmother at the microphone’ album… which is best forgotten!

this one, though, is oddly groovy and has those hilarious, revved-up 70s guitars and cheesy synths a volonte. it actually sounds like the fiery furnaces have tried to limit the amount of melodies they usually manage to cram into one song, and it sounds much better for it. ‘the philadelphia grand jury’ starts out as a strangely sensuous groove, but quickly turns into eleanor barking desperately about the omnipotence of, yes, the philadelphia grand jury.

the closer you listen, the more it seems like eleanor is trying to tell us a coherent story. ‘my egyptian grammar’ is about a desperate woman who cycles around town, xeroxing hieroglyphs to attract the attention of another world entity. it’s also a great pop song, but whatevs. in ‘the old hag is sleeping’, presumably the same woman lives with a beast of a man (‘he smiles only when he can give me abuse’). and so on, and so on.

should eleanor call the domestic violence helpline? i don’t really care, as long as they keep releasing groovy cocktails of everything between twee pop and math rock. one last quote: ‘i’ll drink a restorative beer, to take my mind off these te-a-a-a-a-a-a-rs’. see, there is something going on here.

and, i’m seeing them tonight. someone’s psyched. whee!