Customer Reviews

Rehearsing My Choir

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

What a strange, but interesting album. The first time I heard it, I was terribly disappointed, having assumed it would be just like their last record. I had forgotten that the Fiery Furnaces previous releases had taken some adjusting to at first, and that was what made them so special. This band changed my expectations of what a record could be like, along with older bands like Pere Ubu and The Fall. So, after throwing my own little tantrum about how they'd finally taken creative indulgence too far, and furiously scouring the net for reviews from other similarly disenchanted fans, I found that there were some folks who not only liked Rehearsing My Choir, but loved it. I jumped to judgement that these were people who would applaud anything new, and wouldn't know a catchy tune if they fell over it. Or, that they had awarded it top marks just to annoy the people who hated it. Folks everywhere seem completely polarised and give this record a 1 or a 10, with little in-between. Well, I'll be the in-between and rank it a 7 (or a 3 of 5 on Amazon). There are some fascinating lyrics, familiar stage production/radio serial style vignettes, and dollops of catchy tunes in there if you listen for them. At first I disliked the inescapable grandmother's voice (in fact, I still have a hard time believing it's a ladies voice, no matter how old) but it's a voice so theatrically filled with history and drama, that I found myself drawn into the stories. You could spend a lifetime examining these lyrics and still be blown away with their originality and imagination. There is sadness and joy, melancholy and anger. The songs aren't as strong as previous releases, but there is plenty more to like about this release than a lot of the tripe from girl-with-guitar soloists or AC/DC imitators out there nowdays. This is not a release for the faint-hearted, or for someone who wants a verse-chorus-verse-chorus format; it sets a mood that makes it difficult to choose what to play afterwards. I ended up playing it twice in a row today instead.

Critics and fans both hate when an artist turns their back on them, and The Fiery Furnaces have done it again, polarizing both groups with this album like nothing I've seen in ages. Nobody likes to be surprised, and the Furnace's radical shift on this cd has given the middle finger to people's expectations and had them coughing up blood since word of the concept leaked out. Truth is, this album isn't all that different from Blueberry Boat. It doesn't reach quite the same heights (or with such frequency) as Blueberry Boat or match its epic scope, but their collage of dissociated genres is intact. In fact, if not for one factor, many of those who derided Blueberry Boat as a bloated, patchy and overreaching mess would have probably embraced its more compact song and total length as a tighter collection of songs that combines Blueberry Boats blender effect with the terse and sharp dynamics of Gallowbird's Bark.

That one factor is Olga Sarantos. Critics have come up with a lot of cosmic pedantic reasons as to why this album is a failure, mostly derivatives of it being an esoteric exercise with no regards to music craft, or the telling of the story to be an exercise in literary narcissism. But the truth is Sarantos just creeps them out, plain an simple. People can't take her creepy voice disrupting these songs, especially when Eleanor's never sounded better, and come up with other explanations that won't disturb the illusion that music criticism is an artcraft (it's not). And it's true that this is a significant factor that robs the album of some of its greatness (many of these songs certainly sounded better when the Furnaces performed them live this fall without Olga). But that doesn't make the album a wreck like the fans and critics who expected something made for them would have you believe. The hard truth is that they can't stand that the Furnaces sound like they've made something for themselves without regards to pleasing anyone else. This in fact, is where the best art comes from. It still has the craft, grace and beauty we've come to expect from them. Perhaps the new form takes getting used to, because like Blueberry Boat, Choir demands repeated listenings to truely appreciate, but too many people are giving up because they can't get past grandma's voice.

I like this album more each time I listen too it, and more people should give it a chance before swinging the ax with their final judgement.

You have to admit, not every band would make a concept album about their grandmother's life. But the Fiery Furnaces do that for their grandmother, octogenarian Olga Sarantos. And with granny's own help, too.

Their third full-length album, "Rehearsing My Choir," is a truly weird album full of reminiscences of Sarantos' life and thoughts. It's not musical in the usual sense.... so if you want to enjoy it, don't think of it as music. Think of it as an offbeat biographical piece of musical theatre.

It opens with a relentless piano melody, with Sarantos herself speaking in a smooth, deep voice about fudge, hammers, thumbtacks, lost loves and other offbeat stuff. Her granddaughter Eleanor Friedberger dips in occasionally, singing behind her grandmother's spoken word monologue.

This continues throughout the album, with Eleanor singing sweetly behind Olga's deep vocals, and sometimes talking for herself. "Once upon a time, there were two Kevins..."/"You mean two jerks!" they interrupt each other, before Eleanor starts off on a sweet ditty about her ex-boyfriends.

"Rehearsing My Choir" is probably the Furnaces' weakest work thus far, with its jumps in time and location. And if you don't know that it's all about, it will be completely confusing. And not in an fun indiepop-opera manner either.

Fortunately for Furnaces fans, even the weakest of their music is still pretty dang good. It's full of bright, affectionate, humorous anecdotes and a warm-hearted look on a very cool-sounding lady's life. The brother-sister duo (and Olga) manage to maintain a level of weirdness on par with their prior work.

In the lyrics, Olga's life is given a true Furnaces-style makeover, sort of a nightmare poetry spin. This IS the band that wrote a whole song about a dog taking a religious turn. "Zapped by the zombie! Zapped by the zombie!/Zapped by the zombie in the two-door Dodge/Twice baked brioche and Danish pastry pockets/And lock it's two-door Dodge," Olga and Eleanor sing, after an extended noodling session. Gypsies, night schools, weddings, boyfriends and family love are all woven into the songs.

And they also maintain the musical peculiarities, with sprawling melodies that spill over with synth, organ, piano, and splatterings of electric guitar, Latin flavour, computer blips and bursts of electric guitar. It's Jackson Pollock music. It's by no means their tightest work, but it is plenty of fun. Even if you don't listen to the vocals, the music is worth it alone.

While "Rehearsing My Choir" is not the tightest work the Fiery Furnaces have done, the offbeat melodies and quirky lyrics prove that they still have what it takes.

I'm not going to pretend that this is consistently easy listening. That doesn't necessarily point to a vice. Captain Beefheart makes for difficult listening; Perry Como does not. Which performer would you like a CD by? This is challenging music, but challenging in a good way, and along the way there are hosts of wonderfully poetic moments. I will concede at this is not the Friedberger siblings best album, but one can love GALLOWSBIRD'S BARK and BLUEBERRY BOAT and enjoy this one as well.

As the editorial reviews indicate and as many fans already know, the guts of this album were supplied by the brother and sister's act grandmother, Olga Sarantos. Whether you love or hate this album, this is pretty much beyond doubt the greatest contribution ever to a rock album by anyone's grandmother. Her reflections on events from earlier decades are proclaimed by her in a surprisingly firm and expressive voice. This ain't your average grandma. The pieces (it is hard to call them songs) are marvelously evocative and always feel like expressions of actual, lived experiences. Nothing rote or hackneyed here. Many of the lyrics have a stream-of-consciousness feel and you will either find that moving or off putting. I lean towards the former.

I'm not usually a fan of albums driven by synthesized keyboards, with the obvious exception of Brian Eno, but I find this musically compelling. They've obviously ingested a lot of Beefheart, Eno, Zappa, Can, and others, though with a bit more of a pop feel than all of those except the early Eno.

REHEARSING MY CHOIR, as many reviewers have noted, was one of two albums of 2005 that focused heavily on Chicago in its subject matter. Sufjan Stevens's ILLINOISE was the more popular and more lavishly praised of the two, and I concur with that. But purely as an album about Chicago (leaving all musical questions aside), this one is much more successful. Stevens's album is a great one, but the songs seem a tad aloof from the actual Chicago. (I don't know if Stevens will actually complete all or even much of his proposed album-cycle about the United States, with one album dedicated to each of the nation's fifty states, but I wonder if and when he gets around to my home state of Arkansas--Illinois is merely my adopted state--whether I will recognize the place of my childhood.) The Chicago if ILLINOISE feels to me like those travel guides written by someone who barely knows a place, hitting all the high points familiar to tourists, but not the places especially familiar to residents. But the Chicago of REHEARSING THE CHOIR feels concrete and actual, even if the concreteness belongs to another decade.

All in all I find this a deeply effecting and moving album. If you want easier listening definitely go elsewhere. Even go to the two earlier Fiery Furnaces albums or their eponymous EP. But if you are in the mood for an utterly unique album that will leave you both moved and challenged, please give this a try.

First off, I love the Fiery Furnaces.
Blueberry Boat, Gallowsbird's Bark, and EP are all fantastic records that resemble nothing else.
This, on the other hand, is quite awful.
The Fiery Furnaces are a culmination of Royal Trux-style garage, Os Mutantes-style world music, Who-style pop, and Captain Beefheart-style weirdness. Gallowsbird's Bark was their Royal Trux record. Blueberry Boat was their Os Mutantes. EP was The Who mixed with a little bit of Kraftwerk. This is Captain Beefheart with autism. I had high hopes for this album, but the monotonous and EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS voice of Olga Sarantos, the Friedbergers' grandmother, ruins the album. There are brief splashes of Eleanor's whimsical singing that are wonderful, and there is a supremely sublime two-minute-long, MC5-inspired freak-out during "Seven Silver Curses", but then it's back to more Grandma Friedberger, and more odd dullness. It's nice that the Friedbergers love their grandmother, but this album is really disappointing. I saw the Fiery Furnaces live last April and they blew my mind. It was a totally punk rock experience. Their first three albums are the best indie I've ever heard. I met the band and they are fabulous people. But this is terrible.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that this new communique from The Fiery Furnaces is proof positive (if any were needed) that Matt Friedberger suffers from the musical equivalent of Tourette's. The album starts off in suitably Furnace-mode: relatively restrained even by their standards, almost as if he's trying to stop himself from spewing out a new melody every three seconds, but by the third song, the brakes are off, the dizzy-ing genre, tempo and mood shifts kick in and all hell breaks loose. That's before you've even begun to factor in Granny's voice. Yup, a Friedberger Granny. Her voice is mellifluous to be sure, and underscores just how in tune the whole clan is with each other. Talk about a family affair. The problem is one of obtuseness. Unlike Dylan, for example, who used his musical backing to fore-ground his lyrics and therefore opted for melodies that were often repetitive, the Friedbergers head off in a diametrically opposite direction. The music is subservient to the words to the extent that EACH word or sentence requires a wholly different texture, melody and rhythm. Hence the feeling of sea-sickness on listening to this new album. I applaud their creativity and adherence to their inner muse as much as I decry their willfulness and refusal to pander to any coherent musical agenda.

Hence my title. The diagnosis is acute Tourette's combined with ADD. The prognosis? Unclear in the extreme.

Rehearsing My Choir is worth a listen only in the sense that it is a truly original concept. I think the idea is wonderful and it deserves a certain amount of appreciation, but the sad fact is that it simply fails musically. Grandma's voice sounds like Norman Bates mom's voice, and the lyrics seem like they were family reminiscients poorly adapted to song.

Maybe this album would work better accompanied by a wordless film or animation where the characters on screen acted out the stories. Think an indy rock version of R. Kelly's 'Trapped in the Closet.'

I feel like I'm spying on a baggy relative during a particularly intimate and confusing moment. And somebody next door with lockjaw is sewing fluorescent lightbulbs into their teethgaps. This tilt-a-whirl needs tightening and my pantsleeves leave red welts the size, shape and scent of bedbugs on my ankles and crotchtop. The bedridden are obsessed with various forms of water. The wishing well is clogged up with cotton candy and artificial intelligence. This is Willy Wonka at the VFW, dribbling mothball nougat. William Hickey dueting with the Shangri-Las, and interruptions from Judge Reinhold clowning it up over at the pinball machine as usual. By the sixth minute of "Seven Silver Curses," I ate nine ten.

There is wizardry, a looking-glass wormhole, in the way Fiery Furnaces' bubblegum-prog ditties elevate the ramblings of Olga Sarantos, the siblings' grandmother, who, throughout "Rehearsing the Choir," offers up her strange take on a rather mundane life spent as a stodgy choir director/homemaker -- even down to mixing an organ solo with the sounds of somebody vacuuming. To their credit, Furnaces maintain a self-depreciating sense of humor throughout, a bit Flash Gordon on the archbishop's entrance, insults from Sarantos over her grandkids' singing, a doctor who apparently uses donut-making materials to perform surgery, and synapse-licking lines casually tossed out such as, "Uncle Sam in the back row" and "blackberry filling that came straight from Peter Pan's lunchbag."

I applaud Fiery Furnaces for not taking the easy way out and falling into the perfunctory lock step "signature sound" of cozy familiarity associated with, and beleaguring, many of their less daring pop musical contemporaries. Listen, I'm old enough and jaded enough to sound a LOUD YAWN at all these lacklustre 20 something musical sensitivos who'd want you to believe they have discovered...ORIGINATED even..."art- punk" "synth-pop." or "prog-rock." The more precociously self-conscious among them figure you'll lose the scent of their guiless appropriation of old and established genres if they mix things up a bit; create some kind lame-ass,lumbering frankenstein hybrid sound. Most of the time the results can be pretty amusing -- as a kind of solitary mind game:"Connect the Cribbed Dots." This is an entirely cognitive venture where instead of listening to originality you find yourself merely and self-consciously sifting through the group's appropriated influences. Okay, enough cranky old guy editorializing on the perceived lack of a significantly original and fresh current music scene. The Fiery Furnaces may be mining certain well established rockist and prog postures also, but they distinguish themselves by creatively complicating and enhancing these stock influences. Morevover, they distinguish themselves thus far by consistently NOT looking back at their catalog and repeating themselves. "Gallowsbird Bark," brilliant brilliant album that it is, is nothing like "Bluberry Boat." And "Rehearsing My Choir" is nothing like either effort. An excellent thing, per se. This is a band that seems to take personal vision and risk very seriously. That is a very refreshing posture in this currently moribund music scene. If you think "Rehearsing My Choir" is difficult listening and there's nothing particularly toe-tapping about the material here, you are right. But that's not necessarily a drawback. Unfortunately, the album has been presumed to be and marketted as a "Pop" effort. If you're looking for conventional song structures and loping, yet easily palatable indy-pop musical wackiness--look elsewhere. You've missed the point and purpose of this rewarding album. In my opinion, the problem is not with the intent or quality of the work; instead, the problem may very well be ultimately with one's conservative listening habits. You may do well to re-learn how to listen, and in doing so expand your musical horizons. "Rehearsing My Choir" is squarley in the experimental/avant-garde territory of a Robert Ashley (American electronic music/vocal art pioneer) and sundry avant composers and performance artists updating opera and "voice art." While this kind of classical "avant-garde" tag doesn't necessarily imbue or ensure a mark of quality in itself, in my opinion, this wonderful work by Fiery Furnaces stands up well by itself and in the company of luminaries readily associated with these venerable avant sub-genres.

All the naysayers are right this time. Possibly the WORST album of the entire decade. Dear God is it ever bad! I recomend this album only if you are in need of a hearty laugh at Grandma's expense. Yoko Ono ruined the Beatles. Lets hope the Furnaces get rid of Grandma before she has the same effect on them. Anyone who gives this album a good review is just trying to justify spending the money they wasted on it.