Fiery Furnaces vs. 1993 in: Lou Barlow, You Old Scamp!

So it was­n’t rev­e­la­to­ry or awe-inspir­ing. It was curi­ous, just curi­ous. The video above comes from Fiery Fur­naces most recent tour. Their lat­est incar­na­tion? An ear­ly nineties, post-hard­core indie rock act, with caveats galore. They’re sharp­er and more musi­cal­ly adept than the style­fuck their ham­mer­ing on, and maybe too glam for the pas­tiche — Eleanor’s white hot out­fit looks more and more like Fred­die Mer­cury’s — but Ex-Sebadoh bassist Jason Loewen­stein’s involve­ment has come full circle.

Such ener­getic music, at least in this style, seems anachro­nis­tic some­how, reek­ing of the reunion tours still to come [Pave­men­t’s is alleged­ly rid­ing on the hori­zon and, if you can believe it, Wowee Zowee Luxe & Reduxe is due some­time this fall]. And while the per­for­mance was nei­ther gut-wrench­ing­ly earnest nor taint­ed with the tongue-in-cheek irony that came to define “indie”, the stripped down gui­tar-ori­ent­ed set, did­n’t suit them well. And yet the curios­i­ty remained because what makes The Fiery Fur­naces so spe­cial is their Dylanesque ver­sa­til­i­ty, rear­rang­ing songs so dra­mat­i­cal­ly as to make them prac­ti­cal­ly unrec­og­nize­able while main­tain­ing all the quirky, book­ish qual­i­ties that have made them a cult favorite.

So while it was more than a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing to hear songs like “Teach Me Sweet­heart” de-sexed, there’s always the next incar­na­tion to look for­ward to. And if the Gilber­to Gil album that played on the P.A. is any indi­ca­tion, a return to florid arrange­ments — and per­haps total trop­i­calia — seems like­ly. Yet the ques­tion remains: where me Fiery Fur­naces dub?

[See also: Fiery Fur­naces’ Media Repos­i­to­ry]

Boredoms vs. Vooredoms in: The Purloined Belles Lettres!

From my debut at Philadel­phia Week­ly:

When noise artists Bore­doms replaced Green Day as the open­ing act for Philadel­phi­a’s Lol­la­palooza stop in 1994, it came as some­thing of a com­mer­cial shock and a thought-pro­vok­ing rev­e­la­tion. Bore­doms’ apoplec­tic per­for­mance proved both excit­ing and mem­o­rable as singer Yamat­su­ka Eye fre­quent­ly leapt from the stage, much to secu­ri­ty’s dis­may. Fet­ed by the likes of Son­ic Youth and Nir­vana, hav­ing toured with both bands, they were tout­ed by crit­ics for their quirky pri­mal scream­ing and Freudi­an noise rock. Then, as quick­ly as they’d arrived on the Amer­i­can aur­al land­scape, they dis­ap­peared. Now the Bore­doms are again ready to share their epicycli­cal ener­gy with Amer­i­can audi­ences, play­ing Philadel­phia as one of only six U.S. dates.

Voore­doms aka Bore­doms, w/ Light­ning Bolt & Hrvats­ki @ Starlight Ball­room aka Club Polaris. Sold out.

[By way of expla­na­tion, this was sub­mit­ted as a 500 word fea­ture that had to be cut for space. Oh and if you need a tick­et, let me know in the com­ments box.]

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

Eleanor Friedberger

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?!

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Coltrane vs. Dolphy in: Impressions, First Blood!

From Down­beat, Nov. 1961:

At Hol­ly­wood’s Renais­sance club recent­ly, I lis­tened to a hor­ri­fy­ing demon­stra­tion of what appears to be a grow­ing anti-jazz trend exem­pli­fied by those fore­most pro­po­nents [Coltrane and Dol­phy] of what is termed avant garde music.

I heard a good rhythm sec­tion … go to waste behind the nihilis­tic exer­cis­es of the two horns. … Coltrane and Dol­phy seem intent on delib­er­ate­ly destroy­ing [swing]. … They seem bent on pur­su­ing an anar­chis­tic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz.

Eric Dol­phy died 42 years ago this week.

[See also: “John Coltrane and Eric Dol­phy Answer The Jazz Crit­ics”, Down­beat, April 1962]

Schoenberg, Webern & Varese in: Three Satires!

Bjork, w/ Arnold Schoenberg

If you’re inter­est­ed in clas­si­cal and new music works, look no fur­ther than Clas­si­cal Con­nec­tion and Le Roi S’a­muse. They make me wish Woe­bot was right about this Xenakis biog­ra­phy. [It’s real­ly not in print. Le sigh.]

For­tu­nate­ly, good friend and Deci­bel Mag­a­zine art direc­tor Paul Romano made me like 1,000 min­utes of insane mp3 rips of noise and avant-garde com­po­si­tion that I may final­ly begin to unpack. Once I’ve found those pesky cd-rs I’ll try to post a few lengthy aton­al mp3s to sample.