The Fiery Furnaces-Widow City

The Philadelphia Grand Jury
Duplexes of the Dead
Automatic Husband
Ex-Guru
Clear Signal from Cairo
My Egyptian Grammer
The Old Hag is Sleeping
Japanese Slippers
Navy Nurse
Uncle Charlie
Right By Conquest
Restorative Beer
Wicker Whatnots
Cabaret of the Seven Devils
Pricked in the Heart
Widow City

Released October 9, 2007

Every few years a record comes along that immediately catches me, engages me, begins to take over my life. Records like these begin life in my psyche as puzzles to unravel. I listen to them repeatedly and endlessly for days. Soon getting to the bottom of them gives way to falling for them and then needing to hear them constantly. They get under my skin, and I start looking for excuses to stay home and listen. Start looking for reasons to walk somewhere far away so I can fill my headphone ears with them. Over the years obsessions have included Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, The Gun Club’s Lucky Jim, The Velvet Underground, Madder Rose’s Tragic Magic, Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Orange Juice’s You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, and The Associates’ The Affectionate Punch.

Add to that roster The Fiery Furnaces’ Widow City, a career defining, genre defying piece of art. It has been available to the American public for eight days now, but I know already that is a part of me and a part of my life.

Over its one hour it covers virtually everything that has occurred since rock and roll was given a name in 1955, yet sounding uniquely its own. Completely disposing of the established rule of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-solo-chorus, and reading lyrically like a dense radical novel the best I can liken this to is one of Robert Rauschenberg’s more earnest and kinetic pieces: A thousand important things placed together in a mysterious organization that only makes sense to the artists.

Four minutes into the record, Four minutes in to the lead off track “The Philadelphia Grand Jury” the spell was cast and I knew I was onto a masterpiece. “The Philadelphia Grand Jury” is an epic 7 minutes and sounds like the aria to a great work (which it is), and heralds its sensibility. In the midst of a rather pleasant and slightly funky piano/drum/woodwind interlude, out of nowhere about 1000 crunching, overdubbed guitars grabbed me by my collar and Eleanor Friedbergers immediate, elegant, urgent post-Patti Smith vocals admonish me to: “Make sure that they notarized my will/Make sure mom don’t look at the news/We already know/there ain’t no suspense/That the Philadelphia Grand Jury strings me up./More crooked sons of bitches you can’t ever have come across.” There is no definition for her supposed crime and no back story. Just these directions. I was hooked.

The Fiery Furnaces are Illinois siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger. This is their sixth record, all of them are great but this is their thus far masterpiece. Recorded last bitter cold winter on Lake Michigan. Matthew Friedberger claims he did his part of the writing with an “Imaginary Ouija Board” that would convey to him sister Eleanor’s thoughts. Given the puzzle-like and dark humor of the record, that may be a load of crap he is selling to writers like me. And I’m buying.

The music is a cauldron bubbled stew cooking over with a seemingly endless arsenal. Beyond the requisite guitar/bass/drums the secret weapon here is a Chamberlin. This contraption was invented in 1946, a descendant of the Mellotron. Underneath each key is a tape deck. Depending on the model you have (and it sounds like they have a pretty sweet one) you can play anything. In the case of Widow City we have harps, flutes, unnamed Eastern instruments and whole string quartets.

When I am to write about a new record I never read other reviews. However in this case I have been soaking up all I can find out about this record like a sponge. Much has been made of its ‘70’s sound’ by lesser outlets. I don’t get it and I think that cheapens it. We are at a point in history where meaty drums and deep guitars are part of the musical language, not a piece of nostalgia. It is more than obvious to me that the Friedbergers have heard a record or two by Captain Beefheart, Ween, and Minutemen, but make no mistake-they sound like no one else.

The lyrics as I said before, read and sound like a beautiful post modern novel. Set on an international landscape and juxtaposing such settings as hotel conference rooms and mystical Cairo it all adheres to my Rauschenberg analogy. Throughout its hour we meet Motivational speakers who can control the weather, greeters at cult compounds, Hieroglyph enthusiasts, surly grandfathers, Samoan drivers, Navajo basketball coaches a woman who has been on 103 first dates, and lost Egyptian boyfriends amongst many many others.

We’ve gotten to the point now where I should begin to go on about how it also has the greatest record cover of the year and how the guppies in my room rise to the top of the water when I play this so they can hear better. Like I said at the very beginning, this record has become a part of me. But this isn’t about me. Its about how Widow City is the best record I have heard in a long time.
Greg Trout

The Fiery Furnaces