THE FIERY FURNACES
WIDOW CITY
THRILL JOCKEY
WORDS: AW HENDERSON

You can tell when Matthew Friedberger gets a new toy, because five months later, there’s a new Fiery Furnaces album. From album to album, and more lately, from record label to record label, the Brother Friedberger has cast his creative flashlight into nook after cranny of the indie rock cabinet. He’s come up with some interesting curios that seem to have been looked over by the general populace, and it’s a sign of how quickly and fruitfully his muse’s flittings have been that in the last four years, Friedberger has released seven albums under four different labels. Of course, the qualitative merit of these curios – backwards vocals, Mellotrons, multi-part suites, the “Lucia Pamela” aesthetic – varies wildly based on personal bias. But if you like interesting music that comes packaged with both sing-able hooks and charmingly awkward textures, then you should have as much fun listening to Widow City as the Friedberger siblings seem to have had making it.

Fun is the most relevant term here. In fact, this may be the first time that the word is at all appropriate in the Furnaces’ catalogue. Since their debut, every Furnaces album has been informed by some guiding principle, if not actual buzzwords. Widow City is a fresh experience: an album of songs, not songs of an album. There’s no spectre of Quadrophenia, no statement of intent from the outset. Just Matt and Eleanor’s version of pop music. “The Philadelphia Grand Jury” opens the album with a scattershot of playful ideas, like a flak-cannon loaded with balls from a McDonald’s playpen. Check out our --Track Review-- for more on this song, but suffice it to say that “Grand Jury” dismisses any possibility of a pretense for this album. The song is a complex structure, oscillating between compact pop and sparse meandering, but never do you think that Friedberger is trying to force the song into something it’s not. The rest of the album plays out in the same way. There are subversions of traditional pop structures, certainly, but they don’t serve an overarching shape. They’re playful, because let’s face it – subversion is playful. It’s fun to put noises where they don’t belong, especially when the rest of the song has been established in a certain ways. What sets this album apart from the last couple is that the “certain ways” these songs are established are familiar and easily recognizable. Live percussion, jangly and angry guitars, rolling bass and straight-forward verses and choruses, which stands in direct contrast to the recursive psychedelica of Bitter Tea or the monochrome keyboard art of Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School, so when the meter stretches out too long or changes suddenly, as on “Clear Signal from Cairo,” the effect is more jarring but also more immediate. That makes this music more accessible to the casual listener, but just as rewarding to the fan who craves Matt Friedberger’s mischievous ear for juxtaposition.

This lack of a cohesive idea doesn’t mean there aren’t threads tying the album together. The use of the Chamberlin – older versions of Mellotrons – adds an ever-present layer of antique electricity to the album. Dozens of instruments pepper the album in representation, from banjoes to horns to strings. If the pre-release press statement is to be believed, these instruments are intended to evoke the album's lyrics. I don't see it, but maybe that's because I'm too familiar with the Fiery Furnaces' M.O. at this point to be drawn in by what amounts to an unnecessary gimmick. There's no need to try to tie the instruments to the imagery of the album; the two are strong enough separately to stand on their own. Which is the underlying strength of this album: it's as quirky and pompous as any other Fiery Furnaces album, but it would be easy to overlook if you didn't know already what sort of trick Matt is prone to. I can't imagine what Widow City would sound like to a Furnaces newcomer. All I know is how it sounds to a longtime fan: excellent.