The Fiery Furnaces -Widow City

Wed 7th Nov, 2007 in Music Reviews

The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City
Thrill Jockey Records/Longtime Listener/Remote Control

The Friedberger siblings have always been wilfully obtuse – in the series of their four albums and one EP, they’ve gone conventional, odd, conventional, odd, conventional. It stands to reason that the band’s fourth album Widow City should find them returning to their strange ways; in some ways it does, in some it doesn’t.

But where previously their oddball excursions – Blueberry Boat, or the grandmother-starring Rehearsing My Choir – have taken on a direct linear narrative but delivered the results in strange ways, Widow City feels far more like a collection of songs. As such, Ex-Guru and Navy Nurse are (almost) wonderfully direct and crunching rockers, while Japanese Slippers squelches like it’s walking with water in its shoes.

That’s what Eleanor and Matthew do best: they make music that embodies the lyrics (sung almost entirely by Eleanor this time around, with Matthew having seemingly expressed himself full on a solo album). The feel that they’re going for in each and every creation is almost universally sonically interesting and full of twists and turns -album opener The Philadelphia Grand Jury can’t make up its mind about the guilt or otherwise of the party, constantly questioning the evaluation of the defendant.

The Fiery Furnaces are certainly not for everyone. But who in their right mind would want them to be, anyway? This homogenisation of music – the new this, the latest that – is completely devoid of the fascinating characteristics that make the best musical acts stand out as different, as themselves. Certainly the inspiration of Krautrock and freak-out `70s rock is apparent throughout Widow City, but what’s so thrilling about the album is that it’s completely the Fiery Furnaces.

Watch the clip for Ex Guru