While Scotter harbors his inexplicable blog-crush for the shrill Joanna Newsom, there’s still no band that gets me quite as hot and bothered as the inimitable Fiery Furnaces. I guess where he finds sustenance in the pomp and flutter of courtly Elizabethan balladry, my heart is tickled by winding Germanic meta-narratives filled with labrynthine plot twists and whimsical wordplay, but alas, to reduce this difference in taste to a matter of preference for poetic bloodlines is just the Deutsch in me overanalyzing things again.
So… why am I telling you this again? Right! I remember: the Fiery Furnaces are releasing a new album! Sure, they tend to release new albums like clockwork — this being their sixth new album since Gallowsbird’s Bark (the seventh if you count EP as an LP, which it basically was, the eighth if you count the double live album Remember, or the tenth, if you consider Matt’s double solo albums Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School as part of the official discography — but who’s counting?), but that’s no reason not to get excited. Let’s cut straight to the facts:
Title: I’m Going Away
Label: Thrill Jockey
Release Date: July 1, 2009
Cover Art: See above
Tracklist:
01. “I’m Going Away”
02. “Drive To Dallas”
03. “The End Is Near”
04. “Charmaine Champagne”
05. “Cut The Cake”
06. “Even In The Rain”
07. “Staring At The Steeple”
08. “Ray Bouvier”
09. “Keep Me In Dark”
10. “Lost At Sea”
11. “Cups and Punches”
12. “Take Me Round Again”
Okay, wow, that was anticlimactic. Thankfully, the siblings Friedberger also decided to release two arcane “promo” videos that might give us a little something extra to sink our teeth into:
The Fiery Furnaces – promo video 1 from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
Jeez, Matt, take it easy on Eleanor, willya? Oh wait, I get it, you kids are just being your casual zany selves. You so did not get Boutros Boutros-Ghali to come out retirement and record your record, silly, it was Jason Loewenstein! Ha, cute. We do, however, get a very brief snippet of what track 9 “Keep Me in the Dark,” which apparently includes dueling pianos, which is always a nice thing. Also, they appear to be practicing in a personal library of sorts. Matthew is flanked by a volume of poetry by William Dunbar on the left and the philosophy of W.V. Quine on the right. Eleanor has a book by the English travel writer Eric Newby near her. What this all means I don’t quite know yet, but I’ll have to hit the stacks soon to find out. It continues:
The Fiery Furnaces – Promo video 2 from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
More dueling pianos. Is Matt doing a Dylan impression? No, I think he’s trying to sing the closing track “Take Me Round Again” but can’t remember the lyrics. There are no covers on this record, he claims, which contradicts the statement by Pitchfork that the title track is a traditional arrangement. Hmm, intrigue. I wonder if it follows the more folksy approach taken here by American blues singer Elizabeth Cotten:
Elizabeth Cotten – “I’m Going Away”
(from Shake Sugaree)
Or, maybe, since Matt is describing the album like “TV show theme songs to your life” it will capture the spirit of this Burl Ives version?
Burl Ives – “I’m Going Away”
(from Tellin’ Stories)
The band continues to unwrap this “theme music” theme with their Thrill Jockey press release:
All rock music is a sort of dramatic music. And since the times are tough, it makes sense to have that “drama” be something more like a version of Taxi than something like a version of Titanic. We like Taxi better than Titanic anyway. So we hope that some of the songs on this record can be used as theme songs to folk’s own personal versions of Taxi. Because—ideally—the dramatic setting of the music isn’t provided by the story or image of the given act or band. It’s provided by the lives of the people who use—listen to—the music. That is pop music’s promise and problem, or danger. So be careful and don’t get canceled.
The band is very optimistic—despite or because of it all—and will continue its “Democ-Rock” efforts by releasing a fully-fledged Derocmacy in America limited edition vinyl box-set. It might be called something like Your Cashier Today was ACM CASHIER 96. Matthew and Eleanor are also working on the Fiery Furnaces “Silent Record:” a non-record record, in book form, with notation and instructions. Both will be released by Thrill Jockey records later this year.
This is shaping up to be a good year for Fiery Furnace fanatics: The audience-inspired “Democ-Rock” coming out in limited edition vinyl formats, a possible “Silent Record” that’s actually a book, and, according to the P4K news piece linked earlier but which is mysteriously absent from Thrill Jockey’s news, another record called Stories from the Old Testament by the Fiery Furnaces is also in the works. Hosanna! Huzzah!
Yikes, that’s way too much geeky excitement for one post. Now back to your regularly scheduled internet.
UPDATE: I wrote a “deaf description” of I’m Going Away over here. Czech it!
2 Comments
If you let me, I will ramble for a long time about how the Fiery Furnaces and Joanna Newsom are two of the most exciting and unique artists of the decade, and how “Blueberry Boat” and “Ys” are such massive achievements that they essentially render “Gallowsbird’s Bark” and “The Milk-Eyed Mender” obsolete.
I’ll allow it.