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Album Review

The Fiery Furnaces
Remember Thrill Jockey

Article written by Ged M - Oct 9, 2008

“Please do not attempt to listen all at once”. It’s a strange imprecation to print on the sleeve of a live album but this is the Fiery Furnaces. If Blueberry Boat and Rehearsing My Choir were concept albums, you can slot Remember into the same category. While most live records are held to be an authentic record of an event, the Fiery Furnaces create a virtual concert out of four separate shows and then skilfully edit the sound to the point where you only know it’s live by the variation in sound quality and by the fact that they didn’t edit out some of the audience chatter. In a further twist, there are no titles printed on the sleeve and you can only find out the tracklisting from the Thrill Jockey website. They never simply replay their hits in live performance but elongate and experiment with them, and they repeat that trick here where six tracks are played then reprised (possibly from different nights). ‘Tropical Ice-land’ is a world away from the single version while there’s a great version - or perhaps it’s several versions - of ‘Blueberry Boat’. To varying degrees, each of the 51 songs (plus another to download) is different from its recorded counterpart.

As ever with the Fiery Furnaces, Remember is brilliant and simultaneously infuriating. Eleanor’s voice is the Pole Star of the recording, making constantly brilliant sense of brother Matthew’s travelogues and surreal dialogue, and being literally the voice of reason as songs are impaled on odd time signatures and insane arrangements. Matt’s performance, along with Jason Lowenstein, is spellbinding, mostly keyboard-led but on tracks like ‘Spaniolated’, drenching things in wild guitar. The way they play with format and expectations is refreshing yet raises new questions: is a live show simply a snapshot of an unalterable moment or can the band itself interpret the recordings in new ways? But then if you can only experience a live sound by being there, what’s the point of Remember? Art is meant to raise questions and this, unfashionably, is what the Fiery Furnaces do. They don't make records like this anymore.

Links:
http://www.thefieryfurnaces.com/
http://www.thrilljockey.com/catalog/index.html?id=102862
http://www.myspace.com/thefieryfurnaces