Words by Lauren Pavlakovitch
July 16,2004
The first time I heard the Fiery Furnaces’ latest, Blueberry Boat, I thought the album was busted because the songs unexpectedly switch up in the middle and become new ones. Turns out brother and sister Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, the band’s permanent members, meant for it to be that way. They took a lot of inspiration for this record from the Who’s Tommy, and the result is a collection of mini rock-operas that play like movies in your mind. With references as varied as Pepsi, tacos, baby daddies, Damascus, Hyundai, TCBY, and Beanie Babies, there’s plenty of fodder for visualization. And with folk, blues, psych, synth, garage, and a smattering of vocal distortion, it’s the perfect record for you kids who were raised with the TV as your babysitter and have short attention spans. While each song is long, each component is short, and they switch up quickly, so you never get tired of anything.
The songs on Blueberry Boat and on their first record, 2003’s Gallowsbird’s Bark, will appeal to your inner kid because they’re often crafted with childish sophistication; they’re plonky and sometimes have a nursery rhyme, fun-for-the-whole-family type feel. “The music we want to play is a big enough mess that whether it’s the old folk or the kids, they could find something amusing,” Matthew admitted in a 2003 interview in The Guardian. “Hopefully, it is really silly, shiny music. I want it to have a broken-toy sound and also a piano sing-a-long thing. I like the idea of families entertaining themselves by singing, like every member of a family has a special song they sing when they get drunk enough. That’s fun pop music to me.”
Matt and Eleanor didn’t get along so well when they were younger. But after college and some time abroad (separately), they returned to their hometown of Oak Park, IL, and started playing music together. Then they moved to New York, took the name Fiery Furnaces, and created a small sensation, even though they don’t play many shows in their current hometown. These days, you’d never know they fought like cats in a sack.
We chatted the day before their performance at the Siren Festival about their music, concept records, OTB, and their next album, which will be a group of duets with the Friedbergers’ grandmother. Yeah, that’s right. Keeping it in the family.
What’s your view of an album? Is it a story? Should it be cohesive?
Matt: It should be cohesive, but it depends on the sort of album it is. A feeling should go from the beginning of it. The nice thing about normal rock albums is that they can be cohesive to two different people in different ways because of the way they interpret the songs.
Eleanor: It’s hard to package feelings and talk about it. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with the person who made it.
Matt: And that’s a good thing; it’s like maybe it has something to do with the way you use the record, like ‘That was my record from this summer, and I associate it with Timmy, because me and him went out drinking every night, and that was our song when we got home and rocked that shit out.’ (Laughs) And then other people, it’s like, ‘I listened to the record, and it means this, and I looked up what so-and-so said, and he’s wrong about this.’ And other records are meant to mean something, like What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye is a different sort of concept record than Tommy. There’s a feeling, and you have to get it right.
Eleanor: For me, it makes me not want to listen to it, because there’s something attached to it that I’m supposed to be thinking about. I like it to be more -
About you.
Eleanor: (Laughs) It’s true.
Matt: That’s what pop music is about. It’s for people to use, and often if it’s too heavy a record, then it cuts into people being able to use it. So when they wash dishes, or walk down the street, or drive somewhere, they can step out, and even if you like the record, it’s like, ‘It’s not appropriate for me to listen to while I’m putting on makeup to go out.’ (Laughs) I never do that. I like concept records. I like it to be like a work. The Marvin Gaye record, I don’t think anyone will say anything bad about that record, but it’s definitely about a certain thing, and it tries to handle certain things in a specific way.
Eleanor: And now that there’s so much competition, it’s like, a band like us, we have to have a gimmick to get people to notice us. So if you can put a little label on what kind of record it is, I think that helps people review it and to listen to it.
It does make it stick out more.
Matt: And even Get Happy by Elvis Costello, that’s not a concept record, but they went into it with an idea, like, ‘This is the way the band evolved; we play these Motown-y arrangements; it plays in this bright way.’ And Blueberry Boat is obviously quite different from Get Happy, but we thought because now we had a record company and we could spend time in the studio, it would be an album of these long songs, these loaded songs, in the genre of Who mini-operas.
How did Rough Trade feel about it?
Matt: They never asked us what kind of record we were gonna make.
I’d be scared to deliver an album full of such long, involved songs.
Eleanor: (Laughs)
Matt: I remember the guy in New York came to the studio, and he was just impressed that it seemed like -
Eleanor: It sounded better than the first one.
Matt: Like, ‘Oh, they really know what they’re doing; it’s all complicated.’ I think that was his attitude. And I remember when we went to Britain the first time, Rough Trade didn’t have any feedback on us, and we gave the rough mixes, like six or seven songs, to Geoff Travis, and I remember thinking, ‘Maybe he doesn’t like it.’ But then he said he liked it the next day, so we thought, ‘Okay, it’s fine.’ But other people at the record company maybe didn’t like it, and maybe they’re not wrong to not like it. But it doesn’t matter, ’cause Geoff Travis liked it. Well, he acts like he liked it; I don’t want to presume-
Eleanor: Anyway…
Do you think having a single in the U.S. is as important as it used to be?
Matt: That’s a good question to ask us, because that comes up all the time.
Eleanor (To Matt): Are you being sarcastic?
Matt: No. In Britain, it’s like -
Eleanor: Right. We’re in the position here where even if we gave Rough Trade the best song they ever had, that was so poppy, it could never be on the radio because they would have to spend so much money -
Matt: It can’t happen, practically speaking.
Eleanor: Not when we’re on Rough Trade in America.
It could happen in the U.K., though, yes?
Eleanor: We had a single there.
Matt: Yeah, some of that was luck.
Because of money?
Matt: It doesn’t cost the same there. Here you have to pay pluggers. It’s a million dollars to get played on a major commercial format, all the stations in the U.S. We could get played on college stations and specialty stations; they could play this record. It’s difficult because the songs are long, but they could still play it. Whereas, in Britain, people at the record label were disappointed, not because they don’t like the record, but there was nothing to take advantage of the press we had, because if we gave them the right song, it could be number 25, because Rough Trade has that kind of access in British radio. We’ve had number 52 and number 49 there. It is important to them, and sometimes maybe the record doesn’t work that well for them in England, but it makes it fun. Rough Trade could get in the Top 10 in Britain, not that we could get in the Top 10, maybe if we gave them the particular song, I don’t know that they’d push it like they would The Strokes or The Libertines. It’s something that, because we’re on Rough Trade, we do get to think about, so we have to think about it as just a fun add-in. If we were just an American band on Drag City or something, we wouldn’t get to play that silly game. It’s a discipline, too, just like making an interesting album. It’s a game to play, and play successfully. We haven’t quite done it yet.
When you were doing Blueberry Boat, did you record the bits and piece them together in songs afterward?
Matt: The sequencing of songs? They were written as songs.
When you recorded it, did you record each song together in a whole?
Matt: Yeah. Different takes, of course. (Laughs)
Eleanor: It was complicated; some stuff was on the computer and some was on tape, and it was a big mess.
Matt: It took four-and-a-half weeks, five weeks.
Sounds like it would’ve taken a lot longer.
Eleanor: Long days.
Matt: For “Chris Michaels” and “Quay Cur”, I had to do the beginning of the song and the end, like a skeleton. I remember getting to the end and thinking those were the most fun moments of recording.
Eleanor: We’d put my singing onto the computer because I’d have to sing some things like 50 times. So we would loop it for one tiny part, and then go into the next part. Most of the tapes are performances, section by section.
Would you do this whole process again the same way?
Matt: For about half of the songs, it’d be the easiest way to do it.
Eleanor: Compared to the first record, which we did a lot of live, it’s just a totally different process.
Matt: Yeah, if we make a complicated record like this again, it wouldn’t be the same way. We’d get people to play, as opposed to a million overdubs. But it was fun to do a record on which I get to play all the stuff.
A lot of the lyrics are about travel and place and are very specific. Touring means you don’t have much time for independent travel. Do you find you have less to write about, because your time is laid out for you – you aren’t able to explore places? Is that difficult for you?
Eleanor: For me it is, but for Matt it’s not.
Matt: She tries to write about things that happen to her, which is proper songwriting. But it’s like a game to me – I just make up anything. And you try to make it as concrete as possible, because that would make it good, as opposed to bad, but it doesn’t matter to me. I like to be as compulsive as possible with writing as many songs as possible. So any change of situation doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t have any connection to anything, I’m afraid. Hopefully it does, you know, when it’s done, though.
Are the gambling references in “Crystal Clear” about you?
Eleanor: No. (Laughs)
Matt: I used to take the coins out of pay phones in OTBs in Illinois as a job.
Eleanor: You did?
Matt: Yeah.
Eleanor: I mean, there are elements of all the songs that have to do with us.
Matt: That’s how you learn about something you can mention in a song. Like, I’ve been to a lot of OTBs.
Eleanor: But all the places in the songs are relevant to us.
Matt: Even if we’ve never been there. It’s just fiction, just like anything else, I guess.
Why are there officially just you two in the band? Why no other permanent members?
Matt: Well, with [bassist] Toshi [Yano] and [drummer] Andy [Knowles] now, we like them and we think of them as being in the band.
Eleanor: Toshi’s been playing with us for a year.
Matt: But we’d already been with the record company before we started playing with them, and we’d just started playing with Toshi.
Eleanor: It’s about control. I don’t know why we’re trying to beat around the bush. It’s hard to make decisions between the two of us. I don’t know how bands do it. I don’t think they do. I think they have one person who makes the decisions.
They do.
Matt: Yeah.
Eleanor: As far as playing and records, I’m sure we’ll make records with players who are better than Matt one day, but with the last record we couldn’t afford it. But as far as making decisions, all the work always falls on one person.
Matt: And we’re lucky, because we’ve been able to divide the work. Two years ago, the two of us made up the songs together. To this day, Eleanor does more of the hard work, like calling people up and counting the money – not very much money, but worrying about how much money we lost.
Is having a band in New York a catch-22, like you should be here, but it’s really hard to be here?
Eleanor: Yes. We never would’ve gotten signed to Rough Trade if we hadn’t been here, because we gave somebody a CD and he was able to come and see us play that week. He wouldn’t have gone to Chicago to see us.
Matt: Yeah, it made it much easier for the music to grow on him. But we shouldn’t live in New York anymore.
Eleanor: If we lived in a smaller town, we’d be okay, but here it’s really expensive. Paying for practice space, paying to park our van.
Matt: It’s tough to decide. If you’re in a band and you want to move to New York, the biggest reason to move is the thought that now you can be serious, and people can come see you. The local scenester is a guy who knows somebody at a record label. It’s bullshit, but it affects peoples’ lives.
Eleanor: Our advice would be to get to New York, get signed, and then leave as fast as you can.
But it gets in your blood.
Eleanor: Yeah; once you live in New York, it’s great. Why would you want to live somewhere else?
Matt: Yeah, and then you’re gonna go live somewhere else, and you’re going to hate it. But it’s tough to live in New York if you never live in New York (laughs). That’s not smart.
Is it true you’re working on a record with your grandmother?
Matt: Oh, yeah, she’s a good singer.
Eleanor: She’s a character who we should exploit.
Did she sing to you when you were kids?
Eleanor: She was a choir director at her church. She’s a real glamour puss; the biggest personality in the family. If anyone should’ve been making records, it should’ve been her. It’s just an accident that we got to before she did.
Matt: Yeah. It’s only for our benefit, though. We’re not doing her any favors; she’s doing us a favor. And Eleanor’s voice and her voice will be very interesting together.
Will she be doing vocals on the whole record?
Matt: Oh yeah, she’ll be on all the songs.
Eleanor: It will be really fun to see how she responds to everything.
