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The Fiery Furnaces

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The Fiery Furnaces
Background information
OriginNew York City, USA
Years active2000–present
MembersMatthew Friedberger
Eleanor Friedberger
This article is about the rock band. For the Bible story, see Fiery furnace.

The Fiery Furnaces are a U.S. indie rock band formed in Brooklyn, New York, in 2000. They primarily consist of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. The brother and sister are originally from Oak Park, Illinois, a near-western suburb of Chicago. Their name is a reference to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the British poet William Blake, and is also found in the tale of Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel.

The inventive, often challengingly experimental rock band signed with the Rough Trade music label in 2002, and recorded their debut album, Gallowsbird's Bark, the same year. Released in the autumn of 2003, that album garnered critical praise for its clever wordplay and original songwriting and was often compared in the press to The White Stripes due to the garage blues elements of the band’s sound and the fact that the band are siblings (The White Stripes sometimes promote themselves as siblings, though they are not).

Matthew is primarily, though not completely, responsible for the band's songwriting and studio instrumentation, while Eleanor handles the majority of the vocal duties. Drummer Andy Knowles and bassist Toshi Yano both joined the band for live performances in time for their 2004 tour. Beginning with a performance at the April 2004 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Camber Sands, England, the band's live performances took the form of hour-long, continuous sets of music featuring snippets from most of their recorded songs. Many times, several songs were melded together to create a conglomerate song that encompassed material from previously released songs, this producing similarly complicated set lists for the band to follow [1].

Dispensing with the majority of the White Stripes comparisons, The Fiery Furnaces released their second album, Blueberry Boat, in the summer of 2004. It is also often interpreted as a multi-layered concept album. "Quay Cur," the ten minute lead track on Blueberry Boat, switches from dirty, gurgling organ to slide-guitar-fueled ditties, pulsing electronic beats to abstract lullaby within a few minutes, highlighting the Fiery Furnaces' variety in songwriting. Some critics, however, interpreted this type of material as evidence that the album is unfocused. The epic nature of the majority of the songs made them unsuitable for radio play so the band prepared "Single Again," a take on a traditional nursery rhyme as a substitute.

This single, along with their previously released ones, was mostly only made available to the UK audience, so in January 2005 the band released a 41-minute compilation disc named EP (this confusingly being a designation commonly reserved for shorter discs). EP featured two new songs, all of the band’s singles and b-sides (with the exception of an alternate version of "We Got Back The Plague" found on the "Tropical Ice-Land" single), and was for this reason a contrast to the epic and, according to some, inaccessible nature of Blueberry Boat.

Their following album, Rehearsing My Choir (released in October 2005), saw the band return to an experimental sound once again. A concept album featuring the Friedbergers' grandmother, Olga Sarantos, narrating stories about her life, Rehearsing My Choir was met with widely differing opinions from both the press and the band's fans, being branded "difficult" even by those who rated it highly. The venerable Sarantos used to work as choir director at a Greek Orthodox church, and it’s her croaked reminiscences that form the backbone to this peculiar, piecemeal storybook of an album.[2] Jason Lowenstein of Sebadoh and Bob D'Amico took over band duties for the supporting tour, replacing Toshi Yano and Andy Knowles.

The band released a new LP in April 2006 titled Bitter Tea. In interviews they stated the album to be influenced by the sound of synthpop group Devo and to consist of far more conventional and accessible songs than those found on Blueberry Boat and Rehearsing My Choir.

Matthew Friedberger released two solo albums on August 8th 2006, entitled Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School. The two albums are packaged together, though are not considered a proper double album. According to a press release, Winter Women is "intended to be a summer record, full of memorable, catchy, and un-ironic pop songs," while Holy Ghost Language School is like "Faust, the Residents, or the most 'out' moments of Brian Eno's solo records." Eleanor appeared on neither and Matthew will not tour in support of his solo releases, both instead heading back into the studio as The Fiery Furnaces to record the proper follow-up to Bitter Tea.

Discography

Albums

Singles

Compilation Appearances

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