The Fiery Furnaces - I’m Going Away - album review

The Fiery Furnaces: I'm Going Away

The Fiery Furnaces have long been a fascinating duo. Making songs that sound deeply rooted both in pop aesthetics and in experimental composition, they come across like a pair of pop fanatics desperately trying to conceal their heritage. Rehearsing My Choir, an previous concept record featuring autobiographical stories narrated by their grandmother, is the epitome of this. A track like ?The Garfield El?, having the potential of a understated, wonderfully poignant pop song, getcompletely skewed by the experimental voiceover on it, which it was quite hard to get.

And ?getting? The Fiery Furnaces is the challenge that makes their music equally as intriguing on their latest effort I?m Going Away.

On the one hand, there is Eleanor Friedberger?s deep, unrelenting and carefree vocal delivery, a torrent of wordplay and banal references (?With a speeding ticket from that speed-trap town / the one that got my licence revoked / but I never got pulled over / never got questioned? in ?Drive To Dallas’) weaved into touching narratives, she is incredibly enticing and yet simultaneously elusive ? no other pop singer can match her for the complete package of originality, class and quality of tunes and lyrics; no other singer so consistently delivers choruses that can so fully grab your attention, as on ?Even In The Rain? or the brilliantly delivered ?Charmaine Champagne?.

Yet there is an underlying difficulty in the rest of the music, which is created, in the most part, by Eleanor?s brother Matt Friedberger.

This is meant to be one of the more accessible albums that The Fiery Furnaces have produced ? lacking, for instance, the multiple time changes and epic stories of Blueberry Boat.

And certainly these three or four minute catchy pop songs are what many have been hoping The Fiery Furnaces would produce for a long time. However, the production means that often incredible tunes and the vast array of ideas that are contained within the songs tend to remain as ideas and never fully blossom into the grand, hugely affecting pieces of wistful, melancholic pop that they could be.

This difficulty in ?getting? The Fiery Furnaces is exacerbated by their project of creating a much more ?pop? album with the same low-budget materials they used on previous records. However, to say that it is a failure is to go too far. Even when The Fiery Furnaces can’t to fully meet their potential, they are still one of the best off-kilter pop-rock bands around.

I’m Going Away is out on the 21st of July on Thrill Jockey records. Here is The Fiery Furnaces’ MySpace page.