Customer Reviews

Winter Women / Holy Ghost Language School

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It seems that after 5 Fiery Furnace albums the critics are tiring of Matthew Friedberger. The general agreement seems to be that of this two disc set "Winter Woman" has some decent songs but is too long and "Holy Ghost Language School" is just absolutely terrible. Granted, these are the same critics who say the FFs peaked with "Blueberry Boat" and thought "Rehearsing My Choir" was the worst cd last year.

I was one of the weird people who loved "Rehearsing My Choir." Everything about it was perfect, from the Shatner-aspiring grandmother, to the repeating musical motifs... everything. So naturally I definitely find "Holy Ghost Language School" to be them more interesting of the two albums Friedberger has presented us. "HGLS" is definitely the more expirimental of the two albums, complete with vague lyrical storyline (or focus) and Friedberger spoken word. Rather than just being a subpar "Rehearsing My Choir" it is similar only for comparrison's sake. It has it's own identity and has it's own unique features, both musically and compositionally.

"Winter Woman" on the other hand is billed as Friedberger's pop album. The fact that people actually took him seriously and expected Michael Jackson or something is really funny. Critics and consumers should be aware by now that what the Friedbergers consider "pop" and what the rest of the world considers "pop" are two vastly different things. Thus it is no surprise when "Winter Woman" spins in familiar Fiery Furnace territory. The songs are nice, though don't particularly tread new ground.

So five stars for "Holy Ghost..." and three for "Winter Woman" averages into a nice four stars.

Bought it, flipped it on once... and found it to be blurry and a bit impenetrable. Winter Women is the "pop" album? Sounds pretty "out there" to me! The goods news, though, is that - like the Fiery Furnaces themselves - it just takes some time to take shape, but once it does it'll bring a smile to your face.

Well, I don't think Matt is going to win over any new fans with this, and people who are new to the Fiery Furnaces would do well to start with something else (see: "EP" or "Gallowsbird's Bark")... so Ill review this from the standpoint of someone who already appreciates them.

The production value on Winter Women is weird... sort of muffled, and the vocals just seem too low in the mix. But it starts to make sense after a while. To me this is headphones music, plain and simple. It's the perfect headphones music, because there is so much to discover, and yet it doesn't require your full undivided attention, so you can listen to it while you work and discover it at your own pace. There definitely are some wonderfully weird "pop" moments mixed into Winter Women. It'll hit you in the gut every so often. And although it's over an hour in length, it floats by smoothly and doesn't overstay its welcome (whereas I think that "Blueberry Boat" kind of does).

Then there is "Holy Ghost Language" school. So yeah, I guess it's a bit more experimental, but it also has a more crisp production and some genuinely rocking moments, so it's a good contrast. Of the two albums, this one is also more of a departure from standard Fiery Furnaces fare, in a good way. Whereas you'll recognize some of the tricks on "Winter Women", this one seems more fresh and new, and it's great to see how many tricks this dude still has up his sleave. Interestingly, I think that "Holy Ghost" does get a bit long in the teeth towards the end even though it's only 45 minutes in length, but now that I think about it, that is pretty much my only compaint about this entire 2 disc package, and it's a minor one.

Overall, there is a lot here to be excited about. Sure it's experimental and difficult at times, but thank God there are still artists out there willing to take risks and try out new things. You gotta love the prolificness, and the fact that the quality remains so high despite of it. If you take some time with these albums, you'll be rewarded for it.

AN ASIDE--Just wanted to squeeze in a little Pitchforkmedia smack down (if they had any sort of interactivity on their site I wouldnt need to do this)... it's hilarious to me that they've sort of thrown FF and Friedberger under the bus with their recent reviews. Leave it to those fools to harsh on the buzz of one of the most unique indie rock artists in the world today, but wait, didn't they harsh on the Liars when they put out "Drowned", but then claim that their new one was the best thing since sliced bread (even though it was pretty much the exact same album, if not slightly inferior?!?) Swami predicts that the Pitchfork losers will find some arbitrary reason to start trumpeting FF again, but if not, I just hope that it doesn't discourage too many people from recognizing how great these guys are. On the one hand, I think it's cool b/c it means less annoying hype, but on the other hand they deserve to do well.

Having listened to some Fiery Furnaces, I must say that I hope Matthew goes it alone from now on. This is great melodic quirky stuff that gets better and better with the listening.

Matthew Friedberger can be called many things -- eccentric, bizarre, brilliant, and overflowing with musical ideas. Some even (inexplicably) call him pretentious, probably because his music is so weird and so prolific.

But he shines in his "Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language," the first album made without his sister Eleanor. The two-disc set could have used a bit of pruning, but Friedberger is in his element with strange lyrics and tripped out, blipped out piano music that sounds like the mad cousin of the Fiery Furnaces. Which, in a way, it is.

"Winter Women" is a more "typical" rock album, with a sort of country-folk flavour. It opens with the thunderous synth, cymbals and ripply keyboard of "Under The Hood At Paradise Garage," which rattles into a solid little pop tune that sounds like it's having a psychedelic line dance. Well, what could you expect? Normality?

He follows it up with a solid round of indie-rock songs: guitar pop with violins and synth, accordion rock, cheery little pop tunes, swoopy keyboard melodies, percussion pop with rippling keyboard and flute, music-hall piano with gongs, and gothic keyboard tunes that blossom out into catchy synthpop.

"Normal" Friedberger is enough to make most people dizzy. But he lets loose in "Holy Ghost Language": it opens with a sizzling guitar riff, which slowly descends into a chaos of dancy keyboard and thunderous piano. The lyrics get even stranger: "And he thumbed home the good news/blessing/grace/wisdom from on high/notion, And off it went happily into the ether."

The songs that follow flow into one another, without unifying sounds -- most of it is made of seemingly random assortments of music-hall piano and trippling, swoopy, squiggly synth, which somehow organize themselves into rambling experimental melodies. There's the occasional song like the tight piano-pop "First Day At School," but it's the minority.

Basically, "Winter Women/Holy Ghost language" is exactly what should be expected of Friedberger: solid pop and absolute musical madness. There are fans of either kind of music in the Fiery Furnaces, and so Friedberger gets both varieties out of his system -- there's something here for all fans.

His instrumental skills are completely brilliant and utterly mad. There's quirky piano melodies, solid percussion and half-hidden riffs, and keyboard that is out of this world -- it sounds like strangled computers, falling fireworks, robotic cellos, tweeting birds, and other strange things. And he weaves in flute, weeping violins, harmonica, gongs... oh, who knows what else.

Friedberger only sings on the "Winter Women" disc. He has a nice croony little voice that tends to drift off in some of the songs -- and he doesn't even bother singing at all in "Holy Ghost Language," where he tends to murmur in rambling monologues, telling us of teen alcoholism, language translations, Japanese fog, divine help, and "Beijing ring cities' concrete contracts."

Friedberger does a brilliantly fragmented job on "Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language," two albums' worth of excellent material. Only half of it is "accessable," but it's musically adept and brilliantly off the wall.

Winter Women & Holy Ghost Language School features more disjointed music very similar to his Fiery Furnaces stuff. Eclectic instrumentation, random backward vocals and name checks to nearly every city in the world. It sounds like recitations of excepts from someone's travel journal replete with fragments of overheard conversations. It's hard to listen to for long periods of time but is ultimately interesting at least.

[DW]

myself to the more accesible of the two albums packed in this double CD. I agree this is very ambitious songwriting as many reviewers out there have mentioned, given that friedberger has released - alone or under the guise of the Fiery Furnaces- 5 albums in 10 months! (Whew: the almost holy 2:1 ratio!)

Matt comes across as an eccentric, many people claiming - always, in the name of god- his interviews as well as songwriting as pretentious. I guess the pretentious thing gets thrown in out there by virtue of both the productiveness of Friedberger and the overstuffing in his albums, a lot of sonic playfulness that can get jarring, especially in this album given that in it he relies a lot more on electronic sounds - percussive synths, beats and so forth-, which can help abrupt-things-in-and-out, allowing the a-i-llusion of listening to something fairly disjointed. The ADD songwriting of which they spoke of as early as Blueberry Boat- the first album released in the aforementioned 10months period-, is still (omni)pres(c)ent, giving the alLbum a careen-and-then-cluth kinda of carisma, that is present probably more than you would want it to be present... Still

there is pop in this record and if I were to recognize and recall the songs right now, I would say gems: include: "Wisconsin River Blues" -a first bar BEatle hook in the first line, psychedelic chaos to ensue-, "Up the River" - Dylan, Mark Twain collaborating-, "Big Bill Crib and his laidies of the desert" - lyrically exhillarating account of something involving prostitution in the middle east, and last-but-not-least, what a few (f)u(n)ber-critics have described as a "What the f*&^ moment" and - I kid you not - an "abortion": "I love cedric", which uses "evil" chords - in a classical meaning- and chinese women's pageants. There are softer - less chaotic numbers which I can even listen to without having to think about listening to them, "quick as cupid" being an example. In this way sister Eleanor Nevermore is missed evermore, I guess for the bit of balance her dynamics involve.
Yet
Like i like to say, i like it a lot and maybe you should too.