The Fiery Furnaces are a
U.S.
indie rock band formed in Brooklyn, New
York
, in 2000. They played twice in Brooklyn as
The Suckers before performing as The Fiery
Furnaces (with an unchanged line-up). The band's primary members
are
Matthew and
Eleanor Friedberger.
The brother and sister
are originally from Oak Park, Illinois
, a near-western suburb of Chicago
.
Band biography
They signed with the
Rough Trade
music label in 2002, and recorded their debut album,
Gallowsbird's Bark, the same year.
Released in 2003, it was often compared in the press to
The White Stripes due to the
garage blues elements of
the band’s sound and the fact that the members are siblings
(although, unlike The White Stripes, the Fiery Furnaces are actual
and not pretend siblings).
Matthew is primarily responsible for the band's songwriting and
studio instrumentation, while Eleanor handles the majority of the
vocal duties.
Drummer Andy Knowles and
bassist Toshi Yano
both joined the band for live performances in time for their 2004
tour.
Beginning with a performance at the April
2004 All
Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Camber Sands
, England, the band's live performances took the
form of hour-long, continuous sets of music featuring snippets from
most of their recorded songs. Many times, several songs were
melded together to create a conglomerate song that encompassed
material from previously released songs, this producing similarly
complicated set lists for the band to follow.
The Fiery Furnaces released their second album,
Blueberry Boat, in the summer of 2004.
It is also often interpreted as a multi-layered
concept album. "Quay Cur," the ten minute lead
track on Blueberry Boat, switches from dirty, gurgling
organ to
slide-guitar-fueled ditties, pulsing electronic
beats to abstract
lullaby within a few
minutes, highlighting the Fiery Furnaces' variety in songwriting.
Some critics, however, interpreted this type of material as
evidence that the album is unfocused. The epic nature of the
majority of the songs made them unsuitable for radio play so the
band prepared "Single Again," a take on a traditional folk song as
a substitute.
This
single, along with their previously released ones, was mostly only
made available to the UK
audience, so
in January 2005 the band released a 41-minute compilation disc
named EP
(this confusingly being a designation
commonly reserved for shorter discs). EP featured
two new songs, all of the band’s singles and
b-sides (with the exception of an alternate version
of "We Got Back The Plague" found on the "Tropical Ice-Land"
single), and was for this reason a contrast to the epic and,
according to some, inaccessible nature of
Blueberry
Boat.
Their following album,
Rehearsing My Choir (released in
October 2005), saw the band return to an experimental sound once
again. A
concept album featuring the
Friedbergers' grandmother, Olga Sarantos, narrating stories about
her life,
Rehearsing My Choir was met with widely
differing opinions from both the
press
and the band's fans, being branded "difficult" even by those who
rated it highly. Sarantos previously worked as choir director at a
Greek Orthodox church, and her
croaked reminiscences form the backbone to this peculiar, piecemeal
storybook of an album.
Jason
Loewenstein of
Sebadoh and
Bob D'Amico took over band duties for the
supporting tour, replacing
Toshi Yano and
Andy Knowles.
The band released their fifth LP, entitled
Bitter Tea, in April 2006. In interviews
they stated that the album was influenced by the sound of
synthpop group
Devo, and
Eleanor Friedberger stated the album was "definitely the poppiest
thing we've done."
Matthew Friedberger released
Winter Women and
Holy Ghost Language School in August 2006, two separate
albums which were packaged as a
double
album. According to a press release,
Winter Women is
"intended to be a summer record, full of memorable, catchy, and
un-ironic pop songs," while
Holy Ghost Language School is
like "
Faust,
the Residents, or the most 'out' moments of
Brian Eno's solo records." Eleanor
appeared on neither album and Matthew did not tour in support of
his solo releases.
The band did a short tour in October and November 2006, supported
by San Francisco
experimental rock
band,
Deerhoof. This tour saw Matthew on
keyboard, Eleanor on vocals,
Jason
Loewenstein on
wah-wah pedaled
guitar, Bob D'Amico on drums and the addition of
Michael Goodman on percussion. The songs had
a
tropical/
salsa
feel to them, and most of the tracks from
Bitter Tea were played as one long song,
lasting 30 minutes—a medley format the band previously used while
promoting
Blueberry
Boat.
In June 2007, it was announced in
The
Chicago Reader that the band had signed with Chicago label
Thrill Jockey and their album
Widow City was later released on
October 9,
2007.
Unlike their two previous efforts, this album lacks a central
concept and has a 70s
album rock feel.
The band toured in support of the album throughout the later months
of 2007 and early 2008.
A live compilation album,
Remember, was
released on
August 16,
2008.
The band's seventh studio album
I'm
Going Away was released in the US on July 21, 2009 on
Thrill Jockey and the UK on August 24,
2009.
Discography
References
- "The Fiery Furnaces |Biography".
thefieryfurnaces.net. Retrieved on July 12, 2007.
- BBC Review of Gallowsbird's Bark (dated March 11
2003). Retrieved on 8/22/2008
- "White Stripes Divorce Certificate". Glorious
Noise, 2002. Retrieved July
12, 2007.
- "Fiery Furnaces Setlist (dated September 18th,
2004)". http://homepage.mac.com/mr.gilbert. Retrieved on
12 July, 2007.
- "AllMusic Guide Review, retrieved on 22 August
2008"
- Pattison, Lewis. "Amazon.co.uk: Rehearsing My Choir Review".
Amazon.com. Retrieved on 12
July, 2007.
- "Stomp and Stammer - Bitter Tea review, retrieved
on 22 August 2008"
- "Matt Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces readies solo
debut, by Force Field PR, retrieved on 22 August 2008"
- "Tall Poppy Interview: The Fiery Furnaces.
The Torontoist, October 31, 2006. Retrieved July 12, 2007.
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