A Fiery Furnaces Family Reunion

The Fiery Furnaces' Rehearsing My Choir is the type of album that inadvertently shows how far I'm willing to go to try to accept an artist on their own terms. I personally think it's great, but it seems perfectly logical to me that some people aren't exactly gung ho about a concept album documenting the life of a band's grandmother, told largely through spoken word. I can imagine some people are really, for lack of a better termed, weirded out by hearing the wavering voice of an old woman recalling Depression-Era Chicago over a tack piano backdrop, especially coming from a band that was, once upon a time, all the way back in 2003, the epitome of a hip underground New York band.

We knew from last year's Blueberry Boat that the Fiery Furnaces were no ordinary post-punk/garage/alternative/whatever band, but Rehearsing My Choir is a whole new depth of weirdness. If the closest reference point for Blueberry Boat was the Who (a comparison I've never really found apt, except for the fact that the Furnaces were churning out distant descendants of "Rael," which I guess was the whole point), Rehearsing My Choir is somewhere between Gilbert & Sullivan and Philip Glass, and it's every bit as strange as that sounds.

As mentioned before, it's a concept album and collaboration between the brother and sister who make up the Furnaces, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, and their grandmother, Olga Sarantos. Most of the dialogue (and it's certainly better classified as "dialogue" than "lyrics") is spoken, and any overarching plot is almost indecipherable in the meandering free-associative nature of the songs, like a Faulkner novel set to music and spanning over half a century. The Philip Glass influence comes from the nonlinear narrative, the spoken words over repetitive (dare I say minimalist?) background, and the repeated out-of-context phrases thrown in for good measure ("Faster hammers! Faster hammers!"). It really isn't too far away from Einstein on the Beach. The Gilbert & Sullivan comes from the strangely vaudevillian nature of a lot of it, with something resembling an opera on top of it, and all that aforementioned tack piano.

So why do I think it's great? As a rule, I'll admit I give extra points for weirdness, and this is as weird as pop music comes lately. But it's also strangely entrancing. Once I managed to lose myself in the songs a little, I realized how intricately tied together the whole thing is, despite the apparent lack of focus. It's deceptively well put together, and it's so odd to try to take in all at once that I didn't even notice all of the interconnected musical themes until the third or fourth listen. There are no hooks or singalong melodies to speak of, but it's strangely catchy nonetheless.

As a whole, Rehearsing My Choir is inferior to Blueberry Boat, but the Fiery Furnaces, even when they're not at the top of their game, are that rare group who make me excited about the possibilities of pop music, which is one of the best compliments I can pay to anybody. I can't wait to hear what they have in store for next year.