Widow Or Widower

Early Impressions Of The Fiery Furnaces’ Widow City

The Fiery Furnaces “Navy Nurse”

1. I am so tired of trying to either turn other people on to the Fiery Furnaces, or defending them from those who find them difficult or annoying or overly precious. I get why people don’t like them, I really do. Once in a while they totally aggravate me too, like when they play shows and deliberately butcher their own exquisitely crafted material for no reason other than to be contrary. But seriously, if you hate this band, or have no desire to put in the effort required to get the most out of their albums, I DO NOT CARE. Go enjoy whatever it is that you enjoy in whatever way that you want to enjoy it, and I’ll look the other way.

2. The thing is, the Fiery Furnaces aren’t that difficult. Every song they’ve ever done is basically a pop tune, and most of them include at least one strong hook, if not several. The problem of the Furnaces is that their work tends to be incredibly dense, and the albums often feel like the musical equivalent of enormous, intimidating Russian novels. (EP is more like a pocket-sized collection of short stories, and so it’s not exactly shocking that most people find that record to be the most accessible despite being an odds-and-sods compilation.) The songs generally work as discrete compositions, but every album is designed as a piece, so it can be hard to separate the twists and turns of the individual songs while trying to get a sense of the big picture. I prefer to navigate small portions at a time, getting to know some songs better before attempting to work out the appeal of trickier sections. That strategy has already worked out fairly well vis-a-vis Widow City — the first side was instantly appealing and has an exceptional flow, but the second half is more an uphill climb with its occasionally craggy rhythms and languorous melodies. My initial impression was that the album would have been perfect if it had ended with “Navy Nurse,” but the charms of Side B are slowly revealing themselves over listening sessions concentrated on that part of the sequence.

3. Widow City is an important record in the Fiery Furnaces discography because unlike its predecessors, it is not an attempt to stake out new aesthetic ground, but rather a consolidation of their singular style. At this point, it is abundantly clear what a Fiery Furnaces melody or song structure is like, and we know all of Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger’s ticks and quirks. They hardly exist in a vacuum — a lot of their music makes deliberate reference to other songs and styles in the interest of serving their narratives — but no one else on the planet sounds anything like them.

That said, they seemed slightly uncomfortable on their last two albums, as though they were trying too hard to avoid being a part of the indie rock mainstream and doing whatever they could to make the songs “interesting” as Matthew has put it in some interviews. This usually means that he goes way overboard in the studio, slapping on far too many overdubs, or insisting on arrangements that either distract from or nearly derail the most attractive elements of his songs. (The most egregious example of this are the deliberately obnoxious versions of “Benton Harbor Blues” and “Nevers” that appear on Bitter Tea before the infinitely superior “normal” takes tacked on at the end.)

The arrangements on Widow City are considerably more refined and streamlined, resulting in an album that feels lighter and more fluid than its predecessors. The songs on the first side in particular have an airy sound — the floating riff at the start of “The Philadelphia Grand Jury,” the weightless acoustic guitars of “Duplexes of the Dead,” the delirious quasi-funk of “My Egyptian Grammar.” This is all very reassuring. I was worried that Matthew would continue to embrace excess as an essential component of his style, but it seems that he’s more interested in telling his stories with greater craft and clarity.

4. “Duplexes of the Dead,” “Automatic Husband,” and “Ex-Guru” are actually one long piece, a set of distinct songs that form a suite not unlike “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” or “Mason City” from Blueberry Boat. So why are they split into three tracks and given individual titles? I suppose it might have to do with the lyrics, but I haven’t really put a lot of time into paying attention to those just yet. Maybe it’s a desire to make the piece more accessible, at least on a superficial level? All three are rather excellent, most especially “Duplexes,” but they sound absurd on their own — they end abruptly just as you need to feel them shift into the next section.

5. The Who-isms of the previous Fiery Furnaces albums seem to have been replaced by nods to Led Zeppelin throughout Widow City. Most obviously, the riffs of “Navy Nurse” deliberately recall Jimmy Page on “The Ocean,” but many of the lighter moments emulate the crisp stomp of John Bonham or the sleek yet ornate arrangements of John Paul Jones.

6. Eleanor Friedberger’s voice hasn’t changed all that much — she always seems unflappable and self-possessed, but perhaps now, a bit more so? Weirdly, her performances on Widow City tend towards a greater dynamic and emotional range, not to mention some seriously impressive feats of diction, but there seems to be a greater distance between Eleanor and the lyrics. There was a lot of sentimentality in her characters on Rehearsing My Choir and Bitter Tea, but her roles on this album are more along the lines of the adventurers of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird’s Bark.