The Fiery Furnaces
Rehearsing My Choir
(Rough Trade)
If you thought Blueberry
Boat was a buttload of bull, steer
clear of Rehearsing My Choir, a wildly pretentious tour de force that’s
sure to alienate all but the most ardent Fiery Furnaces fans. Rehearsing, the
duo’s fourth full-length, is a collaboration between the
Friedberger siblings and 83-year-old Olga Sarantos, a gruff and
salty old dame whose life story provides the album’s
inspiration and shape. In addition to being Eleanor and
Matthew’s grandmother, Sarantos is many things — an
erstwhile organist and choir director, a gifted raconteur, an
amateur historian of mid-century Chicago — but most of all,
she’s a hoot. Imagine Bea Arthur channeling Studs Terkel in
the role of Tiresias; imagine a musical-theater rendition of
Stanley Elkin’s Mrs. Ted Bliss — whatever crazy scenario you come up
with can’t begin to convey Sarantos’s outrageous
charisma. By turns self-pitying, droll, acerbic, earnest, and
theatrical, she invests her grandson’s schizo-baroque
fragments with drama and élan, turning an otherwise
migrainous mess into something that’s borderline listenable. Even more so than the Furnaces’ previous
efforts, Rehearsing demands close attention and doesn’t always deliver
clear rewards. Its narrative, which covers the 1920s through the
1990s, follows no linear chronology, and it’s not always
clear whether Eleanor represents an interlocutor, a foil, a
character in the oral history, or a younger version of Sarantos
herself (one suspects that it’s all of the above, depending
on whom you ask and how much weed everyone’s been smoking).
The lyrics, most of which are set to primitive or nonexistent
melodies, whiz by in a stream-of-consciousness rush, and the
instrumental arrangements — various keyboards, mostly,
punctuated by the occasional buzz-saw guitar — are even more
convoluted than usual. Some songs contain so many discrete parts
that it’s impossible to tell where one track ends and the
next begins, and the mewling, twittering synthesizers and
off-putting chirps and burps make it difficult to care. On the one
hand, the CD seems almost hostile in its art-for-art’s-sake
opacity; on the other hand, it seems too frivolous and improvisational
to be anything but a stunt. Still, despite the very real possibility
that Matthew tossed off all the music beds in a single afternoon, Rehearsing is
strangely thrilling, like a box of old letters discovered at a thrift
store. The Friedbergers’ affection and respect for their
grandmother are obvious — and ultimately beside the point.
Sarantos just might be the coolest member of the clan.
Broadcast
Tender Buttons
(Warp)
Arguably
the most accessible act on the hipper-than-thou Warp roster,
Broadcast delivers its most fan-friendly album yet with Tender Buttons —
named for a Gertrude Stein novel but infinitely less difficult.
Stripped down to founding members Trish Keenan and James Cargill,
the Birmingham, England-based group mostly abstains from the
chaotic, glitched-out excesses of 2003’s Haha Sound in favor of the
more conventional avant-pop compositions of its debut, The Noise Made by People. The departure of guitarist Tim Felton and drummer Neil
Bullock is hardly cause for celebration, of course, but the
minimalist approach, guided by analog drum machines and throwback
synths, creates more space for Keenan’s uninflected warble
and Cargill’s shameless hook-mongering. On the most radically
naked track, “Tears in the Typing Pool,” Keenan’s
wistful vocals cling to a skeletal framework of guitar and
keyboards, creating a vibe that’s more Françoise Hardy
than Laetitia Sadier. The anti-imperialism anthem
“America’s Boy” sprinkles soot and static over a
relentless 2/4 beat, but its lovely vocal melody cuts through the
grime and assumes its rightful place at the front of the mix. If Tender Buttons is less
ambitious than its predecessors (not to mention its fictional
namesake), it’s also more consistent, a perfect balance of
catchiness and clatter.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2005.
