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A Response to “Fiery Furnaces Blow”

Fiery Furnaces

Ha ha ha! Good stuff, Seamus. I do disagree with you, as you guessed since I raved about The Fiery Furnaces when Bitter Tea came out, but I understand your position. I even appreciate it. The Friedbergers definitely won’t appeal to most people, and that’s a good thing; at least to me. I find it hard to get any personal feelings for art that does have mass appeal.

When I was a kid, I didn’t listen to pop or rock. I didn’t even really listen to the radio. Sometimes I’d tune into the oldies station, but mostly I played those goofy Dr. Demento tapes we got from the Daniel Boone library, or the gooey sweet Weird Al albums we bought at Peaches Records.

Then I found rap. LL and Kool Moe Dee. Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane. Public Enemy and De La Soul. There were some really cool things going on there for a white kid looking for something different.

Yo! MTV Raps led me into 120 Minutes where I got to watch the Pixies‘s really bad lip-synching, Siouxsie Sioux‘s armpits, and the B-52s‘s engineered hairdos. The music was so weird, it made puberty seem completely normal. But listen to them now; they all sound like foundations for everything we currently listen to.

But maybe the whole fitting in thing is what it’s all about to me. I don’t find it easy to do, so when I hear something else out here on the fringe, something that sounds like a friend, I take it out for a few spins to see if we can get along.

I haven’t had a ton of first-listen luck with any of the Fiery Furnaces albums. It has usually taken 5 or 6 listens before I hear some of myself in there, but I always find it. Their music is some of the most comfortable I’ve ever enjoyed. There aren’t too many albums I can listen to on repeat, but I can do this with Frank Zappa’s We’re Only In It For The Money, Destroyer’s Streethawk: A Seduction, most of Smog‘s albums and all of the Fiery Furnaces‘s albums.

What’s so great about art is that it can be so personal. If you don’t like what you see or hear or experience with art, you can always move on to something else. If you still can’t find it, you can always make it yourself; and then when you’re all upset that you’re so unlike everyone else that you had to make your own art, you’ll find that someone else finds meaning in your art. Isn’t that great? I think the Friedbergers would think so.

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This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Touché.

    However, the track selection doesn\’t necessarily support the give it 5 or 6 listens theory because Sublimation Hour is one of those tracks that, if I ran Championship Vinyl, I would put it on the stereo and say:

    I will now sell 4 copies of Streethawk: A Seduction by Destroyer.

    I can\’t tell you how many times I\’ve had that on in the car when driving someone around and they said, \”Who the fuck is this? This is gooooooood.\”

    Still point well taken.

  2. Well, yes. Streethawk is an awesome album, but I only know 2 people other than myself who like it. I mean, most people probably wouldn\’t enjoy it. But it speaks to us in a way that other albums don\’t. And the other albums listed above, which could all easily be thought abstruse, have similarly profound effects on me.

    And with something more exoteric, like Nelly Furtado or Billy Joel, I don\’t get all the fuss. I just don\’t hear myself in \”Promiscuous\” or \”Piano Man\”. Speaking of which, according to Dr. Demento, Weird Al recorded but never released a song called \”It\’s Still Billy Joel to Me\”. That sounds like it would be more my cup of tea.

  5. […] Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Danielson’s stellar 2006 release, Ships. Daniel Smith has assembled his version of a supergroup which includes Why?, Deerhoof, Sufjan Stevens, Sereena Maneesh, and of course, members of his family to create an album that AMG called, “Led Zeppelin 1, 2, 3, and 4 all wrapped up into one giant boot stomp of a record.” It’s hard to argue with that but if you’re looking for a gift to give your favorite indie rock fan this xmas, this might not be it. Danielson, like the Fiery Furnaces, is an acquired taste for some. Either you love it or you hate it. But you’d be hard-pressed to hate the album’s single, ‘Did I Step On Your Trumpet?,’ which is sure to enter the indie lexicon as a slacker mea culpa for accidentally offending someone. […]

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