The Fiery Furnaces: I’m Going Away (the not-fake review)

The Fiery Furnaces – “Drive To Dallas”

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(from I’m Going Away)

When I first heard about the Fiery Furnaces’ I’m Going Away, I may have prematurely flipped my lid, as bloggers are wont to do. I presaged the album with a hefty serving of red herrings left by the band and a wildly off-chart “deaf description” of what I hoped it would be, but the truth, and the actual album, are out there now, and it turns out it’s not so outlandish after all. The quirks are well-manicured, the freakouts contained, and, aside from the near-combustible skittishness of the title track, the song structures are remarkably conventional. This may very well turn out to be their Sky Blue Sky — a totally normal, palatable collection of regular old songs that are simply too quaint to dislike.

Of course, “normal” with the Fiery Furnaces only gets you so far. The siblings Friedberger have always belied their pop impulses with willful subterfuge, and even their attempts to adhere to standard chord progressions here can feel like a ploy, like they’ve reached back to the Aaron Copland songbook with fingers crossed. “Drive To Dallas” is a good example of this, straddling the line between the carefully studied schmaltz of a showtune and the harried, taut frustration of a genuine heartbreak ballad. Eleanor traipses along alowly at first, letting the Charlie Brown piano melody mirror her own serviceable but admittedly not great car-themed metaphors about, among others, windshield wipers that can’t wipe away all her tears. But as the tension builds, in a typically Friedbergian vamp, she crams the double-speed ultimatum “You said we had unfinished business but it’s finished now” into a too small compartment that breaks free in a momentary squall of agitated guitars before the song resolves into quiet re-composure.

Compared to other normal, non-prog-megazord bands, this album isn’t going to drop like manna from above, and even compared to the Fiery Furnaces’ discography, I’m Going Away isn’t especially revelatory. Let’s face it: “Ray Bouvier” is no “Chris Michaels,” but even so, that rubbery, bow-legged guitar lick Matthew drops around the 2:00 mark is darn near one of the coolest things he’s ever laid to tape. And that’s really where the pleasure resides with this record — the gracious surprises of clear, emotionally direct, unfrustrating songwriting. This may not be the band’s most impressive output on technical merit, but in a lot of ways it’s the most rewarding. “Even in the Rain,” “Lost at Sea,” “Keep Me in the Dark” — any number of these songs I could see becoming fan favorites and I can’t wait to see them integrated into their live set (if only they make it out to St. Louis soon…).

The official video for “Charmaine Champagne” is below, and somehow watching the video makes the song seem much stranger than it actually is. The truly odd thing about “Charmaine Champagne” is that it’s essentially the same song as “Cups and Punches,” only told from a slightly different POV, tempo, and minus the intentionally bad cross-channel guitar solo and Kevin Barnes-esque squeal.

The Fiery Furnaces: Charmaine Champagne

And don’t forget to stop by the Fiery Furnaces’ home page to read all the deaf descriptions of I’m Going Away. (It’s worth it to go to the actual home page first for one additional gag.)