The Fiery Furnaces, Live @ An Club, Athens (March 2, 2010)

As anyone who is familiar with The Fiery Furnaces prolific recording output knows, the brother and sister core of the band, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, have Greek roots. This became apparent with their 2005 concept album "Rehearsing My Choir" whose narrator was their grandmother, Olga Sarantos, a choir director at a Greek Orthodox church in Illinois. Although, as we've found out, the two siblings have visited Greece before, this was the first time they came to play in Athens, their honorary home city, with their band which also included Bob D'Amico on drums and ex-Sebadoh Jason Loewenstein on bass. The timing couldn't have been better for me, as their latest album, "I'm Going Away", was among my favorites of 2009 and, in my opinion, one of the best in the band's career.

Not surprisingly, several of the key tracks of "I'm Going Away" were present in the almost 90-minute set ("Charmaine Champagne", "The End Is Near", "Drive To Dallas", "Cut The Cake"), which also included many highlights from the band's rich back catalogue ("Up In The North", "Asthma Attack", "Tropical Ice-Land", "Single Again", "Here Comes The Summer", "Blueberry Boat", "I'm In No Mood", "Ex-Guru", "Duplexes Of The Dead" to name but a few). The Fiery Furnaces are known for their experimental nature and their tendency to improvise on stage and the Athens show was no exception. The guitar-bass-drums basic instrumentation (Matthew didn't bring his keyboards with him this time) gave their songs a punk rock edge, changing time signatures at the drop of a hat and favoring speed and noise over melody. As the show progressed and the band familiarized themselves with the club's sound and the appreciative audience, The Fiery Furnaces upped their game and the last 20 minutes of their set was the night's highlight, playing a medley of some of their best tracks. Before that, Bob and Jason had briefly left the stage leaving the Friedbergers to perform as a duo, with Eleanor taking up drummer duties.

As the band concluded their fine maiden performance in Athens, Matthew expressed the wish to come back soon for more shows. Although this is something that bands usually say, I'm sure that The Fiery Furnaces mean it and we are certainly going to hold them to that promise!

The Fiery Furnaces playing "Charmaine Champagne", the second track of their Athens set (An Club, March 2, 2010)

2009 Highlights: The Fiery Furnaces

The presentation of our favorite albums of the decade is approaching its dramatic climax as we're about to reveal our Top 5 over the next 5 days. In the meantime, we are preparing our lists of the best albums and tracks of the year, so this is a good time to start remembering some of the highlights of 2009. Among those is "I'm Going Away", the most pop-friendly album of The Fiery Furnaces. Here you can read our first impressions of the album from October's "Listening Habits" and below is the new video for the track "Even In the Rain", where the Friedberger siblings create their own "Easy Rider".

The Fiery Furnaces - Even In the Rain

Listening Habits 10.2009

In this month's album selection we have a healthy dosage of hedonistic noise, an abundance of ingenious experimentation, inspired melancholic ballads, a bit of electro brit-pop, plenty of grungy guitars and even more ear-shattering noise.

The title of the second A Place To Bury Strangers album clearly states the band's intentions. They are after our heads and they have just the right guitars and effect pedals to achieve the critical mass of noise necessary for their sinister purpose. Peace and quiet-loving folks will be seeking injunctions but for noise-heads across the globe who love nothing better than to have their minds blown, this is a cause for celebration.

The band's sound remains rooted in their love for the "Psychocandy" wall-of-noise with its buried pop melodies while paying close attention to Kevin Shields' guitar effects, Sonic Youth's sonic assault, Big Black’s shattering rhythms and the gothic new wave atmospherics of the early '80s. The main difference with their debut album is the superior production (perhaps the result of a cash injection from the Mute deal) that makes "Exploding Head" sound richer and more dynamic, while the songwriting is more consistent, avoiding the highs and lows of the first effort. The amazing "To Fix the Gash in Your Head" was the track that showcased what this band was really capable of, and this potential is fully realized this time around resulting in a thrilling noise trip that renews and revitalizes the genre.

Among our Top 3 albums of the month we also have the latest Flaming Lips psychedelic opus as well as the most pop friendly effort of The Fiery Furnaces.

The Oklahoma freaks have struck a rich new vein of inspiration and the imaginative sounds that burst out have filled a double album full of the most dazzling, wildly experimental music they’ve done since "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots". "Embryonic" is immersed in a creative chaos as the band proceeds in destroying and recreating its musical universe and by the time it reaches its conclusion with the magnificent "Watching the Planets" we are left observing a brand new cosmos that took shape in just seventy minutes.

As for the Friedberger siblings, they have managed to surprise us once again by presenting us their most accessible record since "Gallowsbird's Bark". In "I’m Going Away" they have simplified their unpredictable song structures without losing any of their inventiveness, creating a joyously melodic pop record that is not afraid to rock out when it’s necessary. Matthew’s piano sets the tone in most of the songs while Eleanor’s imposing delivery dominates proceedings as usual.

Top 10 Albums

1. Exploding Head - A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
2. Embryonic - THE FLAMING LIPS
3. I'm Going Away - THE FIERY FURNACES
4. Dragonslayer - SUNSET RUBDOWN
5. Six - THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION
6. Broken - SOULSAVERS
7. There Is No Enemy - BUILT TO SPILL
8. King Of Jeans - PISSED JEANS
9. Backspacer - PEARL JAM
10.In This Light And On This Evening - EDITORS

Top 15 Tracks

1. In Your Heart- A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS
2. We Are Water - HEALTH
3. Death Bells - SOULSAVERS
4. Suicide - THE BLACK HEART PROCESSION
5. Watching The Planets - THE FLAMING LIPS
6. Charmaine Champagne - THE FIERY FURNACES
7. Heart Of Stone - THE RAVEONETTES
8. Pat - BUILT TO SPILL
9. False Jesii Part 2 - PISSED JEANS
10. You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II) - SUNSET RUBDOWN
11. Morning Light - GIRLS
12. Quick Canal (feat. Laetitia Sadier) - ATLAS SOUND
13. Papillon - EDITORS
14. Give Blood - RAIN MACHINE
15. Got Some - PEARL JAM

In Your Heart - A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS


Charmaine Champagne - THE FIERY FURNACES

New York Chronicles

Just back from a week's vacation in The Big Apple doing the usual tourists' staff (paying 20$ to see the view from the Empire State Building - see pic left, taking a walk in Central Park, seeing Broadway shows, visiting museums, browsing for cds in record stores - remember them?) and going to a few gigs round town. The first one is in the Bowery Ballroom on April 24th, the day of our arrival in "the world's greatest city" as they say here, where Foals are playing. Still jet-lagged from the long trip, running on coffee and sheer will-power, we enter the venue and crash on the upstairs seats (it's 9:00 pm local time, but the biological clock says 4:00 am tomorrow). A couple of Brooklyn bands kick-off proceedings, Telepathe (The Slits meet trip-hop experimentation) followed by The Epochs' electro-pop. Foals are in excellent form, giving the short of performance that is capable of raising the dead (that's us that is, the biological clock now says 6:00 am) and proving that the buzz emanating from the hype-friendly British press is totally justified this time.

Foals @ Bowery Ballroom (April 24th, 2008)

The next day it's 80's indie rock nostalgia day. Three bands from that heroic era for underground rock Big Dipper, Antietam and The Great Plains are joining forces at Brooklyn's Southpaw venue. I'm not familiar with Great Plains, but I can confirm that Big Dipper's 1987 debut album "Heavens" (on Homestead) is one of the hidden treasures of the late 80's guitar sound, an opinion obviously shared by the good folks at Merge, who just released "Supercluster: The Big Dipper Anthology" (triple cd of the Big Dipper's Homestead recordings), the reason for this reunion. Antietam, the band not the 1862 battle, have been going on almost non-stop since the early 80's (1985's "Antietam" and 1986's "Music from Elba" both on Homestead are highly recommended) and have just released the double cd "Opus Mixtum".

Big Dipper @ Southpaw (April 25th, 2008)

Antietam @ Southpaw (April 25th, 2008)

After paying our respects to a couple of our guitar heroes from another era, we are back at Southpaw the following day for an evening with The Fiery Furnaces, one of the most prolific bands of this decade. The Friedberger brother-sister team (with greek roots as revealed in the "Rehearsing My Choir" album they did with their grandma Olga Sarantos - also, the lead singer from Foals, Yannis Philippakis, is greek and we're from Greece as well; see a pattern developing here?), helped by a drummer and a second keyboard player for the evening, play an excellent 90-minutes set that starts with "Single Again" (one of their finest singles) and includes tracks from almost all of their albums (other highlights: "Up in the North", "My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found", "Ex-Guru", "Clear Signal from Cairo"). On this evidence, their upcoming live album "Remember" should be great too.

The Fiery Furnaces @ Southpaw (April 26th, 2008)

Our New York rock'n'roll adventures come to an end at Manhattan's Mercury Lounge the following day. Here we meet again with our old pals American Music Club, promoting their new album "Golden Age", but also finding time for some of the old hits ("Johnny Mathis' Feet", "Hello Amsterdam" renamed "Hello Brooklyn" for this evening inspired by last night's miserable, according to Mark Eitzel, Brooklyn show). Support came from locals Frances and Charles Atlas. Good times with a moody twist for our last (for now) NYC show.

American Music Club @ Mercury Lounge (April 27th, 2008)