The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City

The Fiery Furnaces - Widow City(Thrill Jockey, 2007)8.5 stars out of 10Six albums into their career, they've done it at last. Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger have finally shed the image that has dogged their band for so long, no longer satisfied to be trapped by their past boundaries, sick as they must be from being pigeonholed as merely baroque, abstract blues-indie-prog-psych-folk-pop-art-rock oral-historians/poets for the NPR/Chicago/New York (Brooklyn)/Pitchfork/indie-prog-mp3-blog set...Heh, heh. Of course the truth is that the Fiery Furnaces manage to be just as comfortably confounding as they've been since their second album, and first "epic," Blueberry Boat; they've mostly seemed like epics since. On Widow City, the Friedbergers continue to do everything in their power to maintain their status as serious, multi-hyphenated jesters. With a strange, cool mixing job from Thrill Jockey resident engineer/drummer/genius John McEntire (check out all the drum sounds), Widow City either veers or breezes, depending on how used to Frank Zappa's Apostrophe you are, from tempo to tempo, from metal riff to Chamberlin keyboard joke-fantasy. Eleanor's vocal performances - in which she spiels upon "Navajo basketball coaches and blonde ladies" and other topics best described, by the remarkable press release which you should read, as having come from an imaginary Ouija board - tie all of Matthew's wild musical ideas together.All of this is hilarious, albeit without making me laugh out loud. So entertaining is Widow City that I have never once been bored by a moment of any of many listens. So brilliant is the band that I have never, until now, read a press release that is so humorous and accurate as to eliminate any need for most any description from an enthusiastic record review, especially one published in blog format which can thereby link to said press release. What I can say, so you know where I'm coming from some more, is that I felt Blueberry Boat was way too "unfocused," which is to say too many parts easily ignored and skipped, but until 2005's Rehearsing My Choir, it was their most promising work. With the oblique grandmother-granddaughter dialogue of Rehearsing and the relatively "poppy" follow-up Bitter Tea, the Friedberger Furnaces confronted me with two faces of wonder and their two best works to date.Widow City does not quite reach the narrative profundity of Rehearsing nor the lush heights of Bitter Tea's actually quite sweet invitations, but it also generally does not seem to try, instead opting for - gasp - something different and succeeding. The same ol' odd band hasn't left or been left behind; it's just their new album, in the best sense of "just their new album." If their longer records have left you behind in the past, I won't expect or demand that you scramble to re-evaluate them now. Otherwise, this ain't a letdown. It's stirring and exciting, but mainly, it's fun and funny.-Spencer Owen