The Fiery Furnaces in: Dreiser vs. Sandburg, or Prose vs. Poetry!

The Fiery Fur­naces w/ Man Man. TLA. Tonight!

Few bands are as beguil­ing as The Fiery Fur­naces. Since Blue­ber­ry Boat splashed out in 2004, Matt and Eleanor Fried­berg­er’s Amer­i­can Goth­ic has unrav­eled as a com­pli­cat­ed, tumul­tuous fam­i­ly romance: an embar­rass­ment of rich­es, squan­dered!? A tri­umphant stand for art, arti­fice and arte­fact over novelty?!

Rehears­ing My Choir proved a dif­fi­cult fol­low-up that, when mea­sured against Blue­ber­ry Boat’s unlike­ly suc­cess, lacked the obscure, ser­pen­tine pop-ori­ent­ed sen­si­bil­i­ties that defined its pre­de­ces­sor. An album seem­ing­ly embraced only by their staunchest sup­port­ers and lit­er­ary nat­u­ral­ists, Rehears­ing My Choir may come to define The Fiery Fur­naces for their unwill­ing­ness to con­form to eas­i­ly mar­ket­ed pop conventions.

Pro­lif­ic to a fault, Matt and Eleanor Fried­berg­er returned this spring with Bit­ter Tea, an album more akin to Blue­ber­ry Boat in form and style, albeit with more stu­dio noodling: screwed and chopped suites, chan­nel shift­ing and tape manipulation.

When the tape runs back­ward on “Black-Heart­ed Boy”, Eleanor’s voice express­es such melan­choly in gasps and fore­short­ened vocal inflec­tions. Her seduc­tive invi­ta­tions on “Teach Me Sweet­heart” make it the kind of song could be the sound­track for a film adap­ta­tion of Madame Bovary, star­ring Scar­lett Johann­son, as she imag­ines a world bet­ter than idle long­ing and dis­con­tent­ment. Then just as sud­den­ly, the nu-doo-wop “I’m Wait­ing to Know You” is brim­ming with so much lovesick naivete and hope you can prac­ti­cal­ly see Cather­ine Deneuve in The Umbrel­las of Cher­bourg. Still, I wish there were more of the fucked Thriller dis­co of “Oh Sweet Woods”!

Live, they’re a rau­cous quar­tet that defies run-of-the-mill, rote reit­er­a­tions of their stu­dio mate­r­i­al. In past appear­ances, they’ve sound­ed like Comets on Fire and Deep Pur­ple at their heav­i­est, before flit­ting nim­bly through pop med­leys that recon­fig­ure any esti­ma­tion of the band as a staid stu­dio act.

The Fiery Fur­naces man­age to tell tongue twist­ing tall tales with such emo­tion­al, musi­cal and lyri­cal dex­ter­i­ty that it’s hard to tell when it’s tongue-in-cheek and when it’s not. Are The Fried­berg­ers the best neo-psych pop song­writ­ers since Lennon/McCartney? Maybe…