Review by Heather Phares
While the Fiery Furnaces arrived in a music scene teeming with bands formed by brothers and sisters (or, at least, by people who claim to be) and bands from New York, on their debut album, Gallowsbird's Bark, this brother-and-sister-led group from New York manages to avoid the pitfalls that those superficial similarities suggest. It's true that garage rock and post-punk form the foundations of the band's style, but the Fiery Furnaces' loose-limbed music also incorporates folk, blues, and music hall, setting them worlds apart from the stylish, often jaded sounds of their fellow New Yorkers. In fact, the band doesn't sound like it's from anywhere in particular. Gallowsbird's Bark's name and wonky twists and turns hint at a British influence, but at heart, the Fiery Furnaces are scavengers and vagabonds, with rambling songs about roaming (the album isn't decorated with imagery from maps for nothing). "Bright Blue Tie" is a whimsically detailed travelogue of Sweden, and although "Tropical Ice-Land" may not be an actual destination, its shimmering folk-pop makes it no less vivid. A sense of fun is also palpable on Gallowsbird's Bark, partly because Eleanor Friedberger sings lyrics like "I gave my cell phone to my cousin/He plays the threats that I get to his friends at school" like an elegant dare, and partly because the pianos that grace nearly every track emphasize their playful theatricality. Songs like "Inca Rag/Name Game" and "Bow Wow" have a strangely jolly, vintage flair, as though they're from some lost songbook from the turn of the century -- although which century isn't exactly clear. Even when the Fiery Furnaces take turns toward the menacing, as on "Leaky Tunnel" and the paranoid, elliptically political album closer, "We Got Back the Plague," a dry wit runs through their songs that keeps them from being dour. Some of the album's best moments manage to be fun and menacing at the same time. The nervy "I'm Gonna Run" features a great distillation of on-the-job ennui ("Slit my wrists with my Swingline/Copied myself 500 times"), and "Don't Dance Her Down" could soundtrack a bar fight. While songs like "Crystal Clear" and "Two Fat Feet" sound dizzying and jumbled at first, eventually their gleeful chaos settles into something a little more orderly, but no less mischievous. A fantastic debut album that only gets richer and better with more listens, Gallowsbird's Bark is more fully formed and daring than most second or third albums from many bands. It's a work full of mysterious fun, and the fact that its oddly old sound makes it one of 2003's freshest albums is one of the least mysterious things about it.
Fiery Furnaces
Gallowsbird's Bark
[Rough Trade; 2003]
Rating: 8.4
In a grand move to restore liner notes to their informative zenith, the inky little paper accompanying Gallowsbird's Bark offers a handful of (supposedly) autobiographical clues to The Fiery Furnaces' raucous brother/sister gambol: "Matthew encouraged Eleanor to come down in the basement to make their first Fiery Furnaces music together. Maybe he should have hit and stabbed and smashed her. But he just swore." Despite some implied tongue-in-cheekiness (and the obvious fact that relentless sibling posturing is an awfully exhausted conceit right now, even if these kids really are related), it's a surprisingly apt and insightful peep into the bright blue heart of The Fiery Furnaces' blaze: violence, dark rooms, boy/girl handholding, and big selfless compromises all vie for attention on this debut, a feisty blues-rock barn-dance with enough pings and yelps to keep everyone's little hands curled tightly into fists.
The Furnaces' electric guitar, drums, sparingly applied bass, and freewheeling piano riffs recollect everything from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones, and Gallowsbird's Bark plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell. Lyrics mostly consist of quasi-rambling witticisms that somehow come together in the delivery; Eleanor Friedberger's brash, oddly assured warble (the evenly hollered "I pierced my ears with a three-hole punch/ I ate three dozen donuts for lunch") is lovingly reminiscent of the kinds of semi-absurdist snickers that Dylan got away with in the late 60s (check the baffling-but-somehow-not credo, "The sun isn't yellow/ It's chicken," from "Tombstone Blues"). Likewise, the duo's spare, confrontational guitar riffing is grating only insofar as it jars; blues-driven, feral, and scribbling all over the page, Bark's sixteen tracks house a mess of weird, undulating musical bits that are hugely intriguing despite not always making a whole shitload of sense.
"South Is Only a Home" opens the record in a sloppy downhill tumble. It's a solid, foot-stomping burst, with honkytonk piano plonking out a declining scale and a wrestled guitar making a mess that's as thrilling as it is damaging. Both "Leaky Tunnel" and "Inca Rag/Name Game" channel Lennon/McCartney melody-gone-weird ("Inca Rag" has a piano opening that's awfully close to "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") while "I'm Gonna Run" sees Eleanor's Jack White/Chrissie Hynde growl/coo suggestively noting, "Saw my brother coming up the hill/ I tied a beach towel around my wrist." It's all muted violence and esoteric observations skidding across wily guitar foundations, bouncy piano hits, and puttering percussion.
Despite just now cutting their proper debut, the Furnaces have already burned through a pile of drummers (Ryan Sawyer bravely grips the sticks here), and the duo's brother/sister throwdown seems volatile enough to ignite just about anything seated directly in its blazing path. They spew the best kinds of sparks, though: accessible, but skewed and peculiar enough to keep you peeking nervously over your shoulder every couple of minutes.
-Amanda Petrusich, October 02, 2003
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