April 20th, 2006 5:00am
Aren’t You Curious? I Think You’re Curious
The Fiery Furnaces @ Bowery Ballroom 4/19/2006
Chris Michaels / Crystal Clear / Straight Street / Police Sweater Blood Vow / Benton Harbor Blues / Slavin’ Away / Rehearsing My Choir / In My Little Thatched Hut / I’m In No Mood / Black Hearted Boy / Bitter Tea / Teach Me Sweetheart / Waiting To Know You / My Dog Was Lost… / Evergreen / Single Again // Asthma Attack / Bow Wow / Blueberry Boat
The Fiery Furnaces “Bitter Tea” – They’re still playing without keyboards. They really, really, really, really, realllllllllllllllllllllllllllly need to bring the keyboards back. Some observations, comments, complaints:
* Though the heavy rock band thing works very, very well for “Chris Michaels,” and the current live arrangements for “Slavin’ Away,” “Police Sweater Blood Vow,” and “Benton Harbor Blues” are quite excellent, for the most part it results in the band utterly demolishing the nuances of their songs. This is just as well for the up tempo rock songs, but it makes a brilliantly composed gem like “Bitter Tea” seem like a garbled mess.
* “Teach Me Sweetheart” was totally butchered. Rather than go with the simple, amiable acoustic version from the KEXP session, or make an attempt to recreate the meditative beauty of the studio recording, they just plowed through it with Eleanor singing over riffs that didn’t quite match the vocal melody. They seriously should rethink this, especially since it has clearly become one of the most popular songs in their catalog.
* However, “Police Sweater Blood Vow” is fabulous in its new arrangement, and I can only hope that a) a high quality live recording of it surfaces soon or b) they do the right thing and release this version as a single. Everything wonderful about the song remains intact, but the guitars are bolder, the drums are groovier, and Jason Loewenstein’s bassline is very Motown-esque.
* “I’m In No Mood” comes off much better live, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to love that song. It’s good, but it just sorta bugs me.
* Even in a messy live version and transposed to guitar, that main pizzicato-ish keyboard motif on the verses of “Bitter Tea” gets me excited like few other bits of music in 2006.
(Click here to buy it from Insound.)