The Fiery Furnaces at the First Unitarian Church
By Eli Sentman

People who give The Fiery Furnaces a listen fall into two categories: they either love them or hate them. There isn’t much middle ground. Their last album Blueberry Boat, changed gears a few times every song, with lyrics about all sorts of crazy things. Listening to the album was the equivalent of reading a highly imaginative children’s book. However, the constant time changes and long songs were a turn off for some. Many are finding their new album, Rehearsing My Choir, to be even less accessible. On this new album, the brother and sister duo of Matt and Eleanor Friedberger employ the help of their 83 year old grandmother to share vocal duties. That might scare some people off, but it makes for an excellent and creative album. I have no reservations saying that so far its my album of the year, and by the looks of it, it’ll stay that way.
On October 13th, the Friedberger siblings and their band arrived at the First Unitarian Church on their tour in support of the new album. The opening band was Man Man, a group from Philadelphia. There are a lot of occasions where it seems pointless to have an opening band, because nobody pays attention to them sometimes. Man Man made sure they wouldn’t go down as just “that boring band that opened for the Fiery Furnaces”. In fact, they kept the audience’s attention for their entire set. They definitely have a sound of their own, and their music was very diverse, jumping from genre to genre. Its also nice seeing a band that uses more instruments than your standard guitar, bass, and drums. I hadn’t listened to Man Man before this concert, but I have to say, these guys really did win me over.
Although I found Man Man’s show to be great, I still enjoyed myself much more during the Fiery Furnaces’ set. One thing that has to be said about the Furnaces is that they refuse to play a generic live show. Some bands will play live and sound just like they do on a CD, and that’s all good and fine. But doing that just isn’t for the Furnaces. Seeing them live is almost like hearing these songs for the first time. Sure, you can definitely tell what songs they’re playing, but they’re arranged much differently. The key thing I noticed was that in concert the songs were a bit more heavy on guitar, and overall, it was just a louder sound. The beginning of the set included earlier songs, but after that they went into a medley of songs from Rehearsing My Choir. After this middle chunk, the band launched into a few more songs from previous albums. During the encore, the band played a song from another upcoming album, Bitter Tea, due out in early 2006. Hearing it was a surprise, but Eleanor’s boyfriend, Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos, whom the song is about, was in attendance that night. It was great hearing this song because its something they most likely wouldn’t have played were he not there.

If I had to make one complaint about the show, its that it ended too soon. It felt like the show wasn’t much more than an hour. But that’s an extremely small negative of an otherwise great show. The Fiery Furnaces displayed their unique sound well, and we have much more to look forward to with this band. They’re very prolific, releasing at least one album a year, and for the last three years, including this year, they’ve released what were in my opinion, the best albums of those respective years.