The Fiery Furnaces
Blueberry Boat
[Rough Trade; 2004]
Rating: 9.6
The Fiery Furnaces' debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark, pegged them as a whimsical but rootsy New York band, one compared numbingly often to The White Stripes. Most of the clean garage revival was as predictable as a Guy Lombardo tribute, but the Furnaces stood apart, both for their The Band-meets-Syd Barrett nuggets and their lyrics, which read like a ransom note made from ripped-up atlases. Frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger sang "I went to" as often as James Brown goes "unh," and her brother Matt coupled raucous guitar leads with a piano that rollicked like a fall down the stairs.
Yet nothing on Gallowsbird's Bark hints at the ambition of The Fiery Furnaces' second album, the 76-minute Blueberry Boat. The 10-minute opener, "Quay Cur", sets the stage: After a two-minute overture with loud, blatting organs that pump like they're driven by bellows, Eleanor is introduced in the character of a child who lost her protective locket, "and now I'll never never, never feel like I'm safe again," she says. The adventure starts: They cut to the next section, where the guitars come in on a deluge of nautical imagery-- and then the frenzy gives way to an acoustic interlude that finds Eleanor singing gently in... Inuit?
The Furnaces pull off other mini-operas on "Blueberry Boat"-- on which Eleanor faces off against a gang of pirates-- and "Chris Michaels", whose different parts run together so quickly that its story is almost mashed to gibberish. Matt Friedberger, who-- unlike on the band's first album-- wrote all of the material, emerges as a pop auteur. Matt has acknowledged the influence of The Who's rock suites, "A Quick One, While He's Away" and "Rael", but instead of taking a single theme and expanding it into one lengthy song, Matt is more likely to concatenate half-dozen seemingly separate ideas in a way that makes every piece-- even a straightforward track such as "Straight Street"-- feel epic.
So much stuff is jammed into Blueberry Boat that you'd think Freidberger put some of it in for kicks. The Noah's Ark of retro guitars and garish prog keyboards initially seems random, and on the evidence of the Furnaces' live shows, these versions aren't even definitive: Their sets rework, split and remake their repertoire into one breathless block of music, one on which a song might show up for only one verse or come back three or four times. But this isn't arbitrary: Matt and Eleanor are just reworking and sequencing the songs for different contexts. The process resembles the way a DJ sets up a mix, and-- like in a club setting-- the final product should be judged not simply on which pieces they use, but on how well those segments work as a whole and how the band controls the energy in the room.
Blueberry Boat's 13 tracks form a perfect flow, sticking short tunes between the mini-operas, building up through "Chris Michaels" to the brief respite of the "Paw Paw Tree" before exploding into "I Lost My Dog", the album's dizziest travelogue. As scrambled as Matt's palette may sound, a close listen reveals how perfectly he evokes each song's content: The sighing tones near the start of "Blueberry Boat" sound like waves lapping the bow of their vessel, "Mason City"'s beat chugs softly, like a train gliding into a station, and on "I Lost My Dog" Matt captures the frenzy of running all over town by switching instrumentation with every verse.
The lyrics keep pace, repeating the encyclopedic references and buckshot wordplay of the last album, but extending the narratives. Matt pulls us in and out of the fantasy-- as on "Spaniolated", where Eleanor starts as a grown-up slacker, only to find herself abducted before regressing back into childhood and given pills "to keep from growing taller." Gallowsbird's Bark told similarly meticulous stories about Eleanor's real-life wanderings through London or New Jersey, but this time the songs grow into elaborate fictions, and the stakes are higher, with battles and abductions belying the cheerful arrangements.
The Furnaces sound tighter here than on their debut, but they still retain a sense of carelessness and spontaneity-- listen to the rambunctious piano interlude on "Blueberry Boat" or the distracted spit off his guitar solos. Matt sings more on this record, with a delivery similar to Peter Gabriel in his Genesis days, and Eleanor's melodic, speak-singy vocals show a wider range and more force. Eleanor pushes her crystal-clear enunciation with a more aggressive delivery, especially when she slips into character, such as when she stands up to a mob of pirates and swears, "You ain't never getting the cargo of my blueberry boat."
John Darnielle's Last Plane to Jakarta devastatingly parodied The Strokes approach to their second album, joking that they would use their money and clout to make a two-album monster with eight-minute jams, tuba solos and a Gregg Allman guest spot. Whether that sounds like a dream or a nightmare, the joke was on us: The Strokes' second album sounded mostly like their first. But The Fiery Furnaces have made the kind of rock behemoth Darnielle described, a record for the overgrown part of our brain that craves engrossing complexity. The exuberant overload of Blueberry Boat will thrill and transport you with the ineluctable force of a great children's story, one whose execution matches its imagination. And like all the best children's stories, it takes off once the kids break the rules-- when they're dragged away from safety but have enough curiosity and faith in themselves to enjoy the adventure. We're just lucky to trail behind and pick up their breadcrumbs.
-Chris Dahlen, July 13th, 2004
Review by Heather Phares
Overflowing with creativity and energy, fueled by a cheery restlessness, the Fiery Furnaces are perhaps the most charmingly difficult rock band in years. Most acts wait a few albums to unleash their rock operas and concept albums, but just as Gallowsbird's Bark seemed to contain several albums' worth of ideas and melodies (that often sounded like they were playing at once), the Fiery Furnaces skip ahead and deliver the fascinating, vaguely conceptual, and only occasionally frustrating Blueberry Boat less than a year after their debut. The band packs even more stuff into these 13 songs, nearly all of which have distinct movements that sound like two or three times as many tracks. Stories about pirates, Spain, a love triangle, a girl kidnapped into white slavery, World War I, and (of course) blueberries are surrounded by strange noises and twists that act like funhouse mirrors, stretching and warping the album's essentially simple melodies until they're about to fall apart. At times, Blueberry Boat sounds like it was made entirely out of the noodly bits that most other bands would junk for being too weird and difficult, but the Fiery Furnaces forge them into an album that's both more pop and more radical than Gallowsbird's Bark. Granted, it's not a total change from the band's previous material: Gallowsbird's Bark's medley-like "Inca Rag/Name Game" and "Tropical Ice-Land/Rub-Alcohol Blues/We Got the Plague" suggested that the band really wanted to make multifaceted epics that stretch out to ten minutes or thereabouts (of which there are four on this album).
The rootless, rambling, travelogue feel of their debut remains, but Blueberry Boat feels more like a breakneck tour through different kinds of music -- around the canon in 80 minutes. Keyboards, drum machines, samples, loops, and computer manipulation abound, giving the album a sparkly, colder sonic palette that feels like an equal and opposite reaction to the earth-toned garage-folk-blues of Gallowsbird's Bark. The bright, bold title track -- the tale of the hapless captain of a blueberry boat beset by pirates -- is one of the most striking examples of the album's new sounds: starting with a busy signal-like loop backed by a faux hip-hop beat, the song quickly shifts to a wheezy, shuffling rhythm and steep slide guitars; carnival organs make way for relatively down-to-earth guitars, pianos, and keyboards before beginning all over again. As the captain, Eleanor Friedberger goes down with the ship and her blueberries, and this kind of perversely stubborn bravery mirrors the band's fearless artistic leaps.
The Fiery Furnaces disorient their listeners and then charm them, or charm them by disorienting them; fortunately, because their music actually is pretty charming, this tactic usually works. At their best, their albums feel like the adventures of the Friedberger siblings; Eleanor's voice is as aloof and, er, fiery as ever, although she sounds downright gentle on "Turning Round." Matthew Friedberger sings more on Blueberry Boat, and his quieter delivery makes a striking contrast to his sister's more attention-getting vocals. But sometimes they sound almost like the same person, especially on the strangely sing-songy melody of "Quay Cur," one of many songs with lyrics as insanely detailed as the sounds that surround them. On top of the many allusions and references in the album -- which include Beanie Babies, Sir Robert Grayson, OxyContin, and Damascus computer cafes -- dazzling, obscure wordplay like "you geeched that gazoon's gow" fill out more than a few songs. You could say that the Friedbergers' stream-of-consciousness approach nearly reaches Joyce levels, but that would be pretentious, and while Blueberry Boat might seem pretentious on paper, it's actually just playfully brainy. The delightful "Birdie Brain" rails against the march of progress and technology (and antiquated technology, like steam trains and livery cars, at that) against a backdrop of twinkly synths straight out of the PBS astronomy show Star Hustler.
Blueberry Boat sounds like it was made for and by people with highly developed long and short attention spans; it's an album of children's songs for adults. This is especially apparent than on "Chief Inspector Blancheflower." It begins as a story about a boy unable to concentrate long enough to get good grades but with a sharp focus for details like "tickets, tangibles, chips and stars." Matthew Friedberger's lead vocal is backed by a tweaked, babyish one, mimicking the song's flashback lyrics. It's a clever trick, and at times, the album threatens to drown in its own wittiness, but every now and then there's a briefly emotional moment that's more powerful than an entire ballad would be; the instrumental coda at the end of "Blancheflower" is one of these glimpses. The band also has a gift for making the strange sound familiar and the familiar sound strange: on "Chris Michaels" they pay homage to the Who, the past masters of rock operas and concept albums. Eleanor plays the emotive Roger Daltrey to Matthew's more reflective, pensive Pete Townshend, and the song's rapid-fire riffs, big pianos, and mix of stomping rock with plaintive interludes is pure Who -- although the Who never wrote a rock opera that involves getting arrested for credit card fraud and escaping from the Bombay Army. But, fortunately, the Fiery Furnaces did. As engaging as the album can be, it's still a lot to digest; in the wrong mood, it can feel like too much time spent at the amusement park. Blueberry Boat can be appreciated in the same way you would a puzzle box with intricate, endlessly shifting parts: you can spend a lot of time trying to unlock (or describe) its riddles, or just enjoy the artfulness behind them.
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