Rehearsing My Choir

by

The Fiery Furnaces

Edit

Critics and fans both hate when an artist turns their back on them, and The Fiery Furnaces have done it again, polarizing both groups with this album like nothing I've seen in ages. Nobody likes to be surprised, and the Furnace's radical shift on this cd has given the middle finger to people's expectations and had them coughing up blood since word of the concept leaked out. Truth is, this album isn't all that different from Blueberry Boat. It doesn't reach quite the same heights (or with such frequency) as Blueberry Boat or match its epic scope, but their collage of dissociated genres is intact. In fact, if not for one factor, many of those who derided Blueberry Boat as a bloated, patchy and overreaching mess would have probably embraced its more compact song and total length as a tighter collection of songs that combines Blueberry Boats blender effect with the terse and sharp dynamics of Gallowbird's Bark.

That one factor is Olga Sarantos. Critics have come up with a lot of cosmic pedantic reasons as to why this album is a failure, mostly derivatives of it being an esoteric exercise with no regards to music craft, or the telling of the story to be an exercise in literary narcissism. But the truth is Sarantos just creeps them out, plain an simple. People can't take her creepy voice disrupting these songs, especially when Eleanor's never sounded better, and come up with other explanations that won't disturb the illusion that music criticism is an artcraft (it's not). And it's true that this is a significant factor that robs the album of some of its greatness (many of these songs certainly sounded better when the Furnaces performed them live this fall without Olga). But that doesn't make the album a wreck like the fans and critics who expected something made for them would have you believe. The hard truth is that they can't stand that the Furnaces sound like they've made something for themselves without regards to pleasing anyone else. This in fact, is where the best art comes from. It still has the craft, grace and beauty we've come to expect from them. Perhaps the new form takes getting used to, because like Blueberry Boat, Choir demands repeated listenings to truely appreciate, but too many people are giving up because they can't get past grandma's voice.

I like this album more each time I listen too it, and more people should give it a chance before swinging the ax with their final judgement.

First off, I love the Fiery Furnaces.

Blueberry Boat, Gallowsbird's Bark, and EP are all fantastic records that resemble nothing else.

This, on the other hand, is quite awful.

The Fiery Furnaces are a culmination of Royal Trux-style garage, Os Mutantes-style world music, Who-style pop, and Captain Beefheart-style weirdness. Gallowsbird's Bark was their Royal Trux record. Blueberry Boat was their Os Mutantes. EP was The Who mixed with a little bit of Kraftwerk. This is Captain Beefheart with autism. I had high hopes for this album, but the monotonous and EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS voice of Olga Sarantos, the Friedbergers' grandmother, ruins the album. There are brief splashes of Eleanor's whimsical singing that are wonderful, and there is a supremely sublime two-minute-long, MC5-inspired freak-out during "Seven Silver Curses", but then it's back to more Grandma Friedberger, and more odd dullness. It's nice that the Friedbergers love their grandmother, but this album is really disappointing. I saw the Fiery Furnaces live last April and they blew my mind. It was a totally punk rock experience. Their first three albums are the best indie I've ever heard. I met the band and they are fabulous people. But this is terrible.