Firing Up The Furnaces

Thu 24th Feb, 2005 in Features

It has been a busy year for The Fiery Furnaces and it is only February. The duo consisting of brother and sister, Eleanor and Matt Friedberger have been around since early 2000 when they started playing a couple of gigs around town in New York. They soon enough got signed to Rough Trade Records and released their debut album Gallowsbird’s Bark in 2003.

Later in 2004 they they toured the east coast of Australia as the support act for Franz Ferdinand, whilst also playing Splendour In The Grass festival, plus they released their second full-length album Blueberry Boat.

Now in 2005, The Fiery Furnaces have already released an EP, smartly titled EP and are packing their bags to tour Australia again in mid-March but this time as a headlining act.

Currently, though Eleanor and Matt have huddled themselves into a recording studio in Michigan to record their third full-length album. As Eleanor is singing in the background, I chat to Matt about the possiblity of having their Grandmother featuring on the album, “She wanted to do it pretty much, she corrected a lot of the lyrics and a lot of the grammar,” says Matt, but was she any help I ask, “It was good to have her help,” Matt lightly chuckles.

There have been some noted squabbles in the past between the siblings in the the studio but this time the recordering process seems to be running smoothly, as Matt says ”We’ re getting along fine, no problems, just who’s going to go down to the grocery store for the other one, it’s the only fighting,” and then he quickly adds “not fighting , harsh words.”

With gentle harsh words being thrown in the studio there is a bit of urgency to get the recording finished as the band have only got two days left in the studio. As Matt states “We’re kind of in a rush, it’s getting hectic, there’s a lot to finish I’m afraid,” but fans do not be afraid as the band will ‘plough through’ and release their third album.

The band are making plans to tour the east coast of Australia in mid-March. “We love it,” delcares Matt when asked whether or not he likes coming over to Australia, “We like looking at the flora and fauna…(but) we’re disappointed we don’t get any tourist days.” Hopefully though, the siblings will have a few hours spare to play a little bit of cricket. They maybe from America but they do know a little about cricket, “Our Dad’s English and so we like cricket, although we really don’t know how to play cricket.” but that doesn’t dampen Matt’s spirits as he says “hopefully when we come over to Australia we’ll get to play some cricket.”

From the beginning, the Fiery Furnaces have been compared to The White Stripes due to their white lie that they were a brother and sister band, Matt responds to the comparison with “We don’t sound like The White Stripes but not that we don’t like them.” In fact, there is nothing to compare about the music of the two, it would be easier to list differences than simularities.

Although Matt does jokingly says, “Someone said once that we sounded like Meatloaf.” Which is a bit off the mark but as Matt continues “that’s not really fair because they didn’t really think that we sounded like Meatloaf.”

It is hard to compare the unique sound that comes from the band. Inspiration for their music comes from many places and many ideas but it depends as Matt says “Sometimes you hear a record you hate and want to do a verision of it that you like and sometimes you hear a record that you like… and you think you can do your own little footnotes to that record and sometimes you have some silly story that you think would make a nice song.” So, it seems that inspirations for a song can come from anywhere as long as it fires up their imagination.

The band’s creativity one on part seems to come from Matt’s uniqueness, for example whe asked what his favourite book was, instead for replying with a book title and author, he replied with “The eight volumes of the ten volumes of the Scottish National Dictionary”. Apparently it is his favourite as it has ‘got all those silly Scot words in it’. Manybe it is some of these words that have been supplying some inspiration to the two.

With the studio deadline approaching I decided that I should leave Matt in peace and let them get back to producing another aural masterpiece.

The Fiery Furnaces Australian Tour 2005:
Wednesday 16 March, Brisbane, Troubadour
Thursday 17 March, Sydney, The Gaelic Club
Friday 18 March, Melbourne, Northcote Social Club
Saturday 19 March, Melbourne,  Northcote Social Club