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The Fiery Furnaces Widow City Released in 2007 9.4/10 Styles Garage Rock Experimental Rock Song Highlights Automatic Husband Clear Signal From Cairo Pricked in the Heart |
After being let-down by last year's somewhat dull and directionless Bitter Tea, I really wasn't sure what to expect from Widow City, the Fiery Furnaces' latest release. I approached the album with great trepidation and intentionally low expectations, but it turns out any concerns I held about the group continuing their downward slide were completely unneccesary, as Widow City is easily on par with their very best work. True to their nature of branching out into new territory, this latest album is dominated by a strong 1970s rock influence, and as such it features plenty of energetic guitar and percussion, with much less focus on the piano and synth of the group's last couple of albums. The enthusiasm for experimentation we've seen in the Friedberger siblings' other albums remains intact, but the inconsistency and seemingly directionless mish-mash of Bitter Tea is replaced by a much more well balanced and high quality tracklisting, characterised by the adventurous spirit, tight songwriting and "daunting but eventually accessible" song structures of Blueberry Boat. Widow City's first four tracks are downright exceptional, opening the album with such quality that they set the bar almost unreasonably high for its remainder. "The Philadelphia Grand Jury" begins by alternating between a contemplative, foot-tapping percussion/bass combo and a triple-tracked, fuzzed out electric guitar, before finally bursting into the song's bouncy main section. Eleanor's vocal is sassy and immediately addictive, and the way that she sings "It's all in the hands of the Philadelphia Grand Jury now" before leaping into a lightning quick diss of "More crooked sons of bitches you can't ever have come across" is just perfect. There are some instrumental variations and a particularly rousing guitar solo before returning to those original drums and percussion, which slowly see the song through to its conclusion. Arguably the album's most straightforward track, "Duplexes of the Dead" opens with some trippy wah-wah guitar and hand-percussion. The verses feature more mellow, sleepy instrumentation, juxtaposed nicely against Eleanor's snappy vocal delivery and the gradually introduced full-kit percussion, while the chorus' soaring synths, edgy guitar and massive drum fills provide the song with some essential, intermittent adrenaline bursts. Following is "Automatic Husband", and in my opinion it's probably the album's very best track - a blazing two minute ditty that incorporates spoken-word vocals, abrasive guitar, something that could be vaguely described as old-school hip-hop (definitely a first for The Fierys) and even some well-placed flourishes of harp. It's the sort of track that really doesn't add up on paper, but it sounds spectacular. The quartet is rounded out by "Ex-Guru", another relatively straightforward track of driving percussion and guitar, with yet another fantastic vocal turn from Elanour, which eventually detours into a noisy instrumental towards the end. On a lot of albums, opening up so strongly can often be something of a death sentence, as it can relegate the less-impressive remainder of the album to "Why Bother?" status. However, as the album properly opens up to the listener with additional plays, it becomes apparent that there really isn't anything wrong with the sequencing. The strong, highly accessible opening gives the album a real surging momentum which well-and-truly hooks the listener in. This momentum is then gradually directed into the album's somewhat more eccentric second-half, and the first stop is the powerful, adrenaline pumping hard-rocker "Clear Signal from Cairo", easily the albums heaviest, most guitar-centric track. It works nicely as a "bridging track" of sorts, as it contains all the pace and catchiness of the tracks before it, with a sizeable touch of the weirdness that follows. The second half of the album is not only stranger, but also a little more scattershot than the first. However, as you get more used to the songs and the sequencing, it really does all start to fall into place. There are a handful of tracks with immediate appeal, such as the bouncy rocker "Japanese Slippers", as well as "Wicker Whatnots", which features massive basslines combined with drumming so skittish and filtered that it borders on sounding like Squarepusher, and the mellow, soft-rocker "Pricked in the Heart". However, as I kept going back to the album for extra listens I really started to notice how great the rest of it was, too. "Navy Nurse" is a long, multi-styled track, made especially addictive by Eleanor's fantastic "If there's anything I've had enough of, it's today" chorus. "Caberet of the Seven Devils" is another one of their irresitably convoluted story-songs, condensed into a hectic, sub-3-minute format. Even the utterly bizzare, album-closing title track, which is made up of fractured bursts of upright piano and fluttering electronic percussion, all shaped around Eleanor's clunky vocal, reveals itself to be much more specifically crafted and easy to follow than it initially seems. When I started thinking about how to review Widow City, I thought that perhaps its only legitimate downside was its longish run-time. With a whopping 16 tracks clocking in at around an hour, it seemed to be somewhat overstuffed. Now that I've listened to it a few times, though, I honestly can't think of much I'd choose to cut out. "Restorative Beer" is kind of average, and the last 2 minutes of "The Phiadelphia Grand Jury" could be done without, but that's about it. Much like Blueberry Boat, Widow City remains entertaining throughout its lengthy duration thanks to great sequencing, a sensical balance of short and long songs and the perfect tradeoff of consistensy vs variety and accessability vs experimentation. I'm very happy to say that Widow City really is an incredibly strong, pleasantly surprising return to form by a group who seemed to be in danger of letting their ecclectic indulgences run them off the rails alltogether. They've pushed themselves in a new direction with the classic rock influences, and yet they sound as familiar as ever. It's an expectation-exceeding work that propels Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger back to the VIP room of modern-rock visionaries and is - plain and simple - a hell of a good time. |