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"Dad, we need to put the car in the furnace." This quote from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," a children's movie from 1968, combined with the biblical and solemn reference to a “baptism by fire,” brings with it the name of the Chicago-based band residing in New York. And thus “The Fiery Furnaces”. “Rehearsing My Choir” is their third LP; a Rough Trade record, dated 2005, twin to the subsequent “Bitter Tea,” but unrelated to it and its predecessors, because it is more experimental and detached from song form.
This time Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger enlisted their over-eighty grandmother, Olga Sarantos, former director of the Christian Orthodox Church choir of Oak Park, their native suburb; she is entrusted with the long melodramatic narration of personal life episodes and circumstantial anecdotes of 1940s Illinois, in a continuous, almost uninterrupted, ineluctable stream of consciousness. With the orator engages, in an intergenerational exchange, often satirical, Eleanor: her voice is situated halfway between Chrissie Hynde and Grace Slick. Charming and affable as the Pretender, she boasts the persistent beauty of the latter, yet devoid of that same expressive power.
Upon the storytelling, spoken and recited, are aggregated Matthew's bizarre inventions and variations, alternating frenetic, polyphonic, incisive moments with slow, clear, and minimal inflections. Keyboards abound, sometimes solemn, sometimes playful, sometimes classical, sometimes weighted down like the Residents. Then harpsichords, electric and sometimes acoustic guitars, electronic loops, analog and digital cacophonies settle into uneven collages, into fragments of songs and changing sketches, into stylistic features and “flies in the bottle.” Gestures prevail over sounds, atmospheres over harmonies, harmonies over melodies. The imperative is to defy expectations, avoid catchy folky refrains already amiably effused in “Gallowsbird’s Bark” and the eponymous EP.
In the Friedberger siblings' imaginative world, Marcel Proust meets Walter Benjamin: having lost the unequivocal meaning of truth-aletheia, we can only access fragments of meaning and exploded constellations of meanings, aligning them with each other in search of chiasmatic correspondences, even between memories and discontinuous hopes.
Between Prog ambitions and amateurism à la Fugs, Indie Pop is elevated to Art Rock by the Fiery Furnaces. Avant-Pop is tinged with vivid variety and elusive concreteness, synth-pop and garage blues, in multifaceted, heterogeneous, sometimes thorny textures, between syncretism and idiosyncrasies. There are no conventional songs or those reducible to a canonical structure. There’s also no twisted Stonian blues that hovered in the immediate predecessor, the excellent “Blueberry Boat.” Never before have the “Fiery Furnaces” proved as useful for producing bricks and mortar: so Beefheart, Zappa, Residents via “Third Reich Rock'n'Roll,” Pere-Ubu via “Modern Dance,” the debuting Faust, the Royal Trux, the Devo, the Gong, the Kinks, and still the amateurism of the Shaggs and the professionalism of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy, in attitudes, if not in the fragmentary forms, become a total patch-work, a rock opera entirely unfastened, with complex scores, without apparent coherence, without lyricism. The sound of memories emerges rhapsodic, Indie Prog experimentation becomes in some way “fast and bulbous.”
The Garfield El, the first track, opens precisely with a rambling speech by Grandma Olga at Captain Beefheart's “Fast and bulbous”: “Faster Hammers” she repeats, in a continuous evocation, traversing a sabbat of keyboards gone crazy with joy. Wayward Granddaughter, with a chirping jaw harp and a caressing harpsichord, on which are grafted disco beat percussion, starts as a song then drifts, finally rattling on the strings of a stooge-like electric garage. These two tracks perfectly epitomize the entire concept album. Among the other pieces, all at least seven minutes long, Slavin Away hints at a plausible Folk melody, only to quickly obfuscate it.
An album hard to listen to, difficult to comprehend. Irrational, polyhedral sound collages, hyperboles, landscapes visible only in glimpses. Compositional Dadaism, reluctant to form, in an apparently organized chaos. The most improbable idea of a rock opera.
Did Grandma perhaps disown it?
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Rehearsing My Choir (05:43)
Rehearsing my choir
But there was one other man with whom i didn't get along
The bishop
Would head down, head down to deerport station
To see what stars on the silver screen might be seen
Or broadway stage were all the rage
With his black leather autograph book
And his black leather pastoral pumps
And his pressed black robes
And his tidy black beard of which he was so proud
And his hat that stuck out in a crowd
But there he'd sit
At his table at the edgewater hotel
Wearing his ecclesiastical furs
And lunching with two giggly and none too healthy looking young men
And in his shirt pocket up close to his heart was his autographed picture of robert mitchum
Which he no doubt used in an impure way
And i was at home rehearsing my choir
On christmas day
In the afternoon
I got a call at home
The bishop was on the phone
Wanting the choir to go and sing
On some channel 44 thing
And i said "out of the question!
The rest of the day is for their families!"
And the bishop became furious
All that time singing western music
Christmas carols, backsliding
And no time to represent the diocese
But of course he was just upset because he wanted to be on the show
And he hated women
And i knew he was angry with me
But i couldn't worry about it
I went about my business
Rehearsing my choir
Rehearsing my choir
(da da da da da da da)
Again!
(da da da da da da da)
Ugh, altos, out of tune!
(da da da da da da da)
That's not good!
(da da da da da da da)
That sounds horrible
Next sunday was my late sister's namesday
La la la
And the bishop was coming that day to our church to deliver a sermon
Which would give me quite a big surprise
"Decadence in the church!
Betrayal of our traditions!
Look up in the shoir loft, for instance, the lady in red
Eva!
I ban her from receiving communion
And remove her as choir director!"
I couldn't believe my ears
And the congregation couldn't believe theirs
And my husband was furious when he was told, as he wasn't there at the time
And letters were written and phone calls were placed
And the matter was taken up, and i was granted an audience
And i sat there nervous and frightened
When into the room
Stepped his eminence
The archbishop
They had a strange deliberating process at his initiative
As it was his prerogative alone
But the hierarch with the tallest hat and longest beard would stand in the middle
And the prelates with shorter hats and beards radiated out
With the archbishop in front of them
And then they began to intone
And i was left on the other side of the door, alone
And when they came out, bishop nikolaki was sent to San Jose
03 We Wrote Letters Everyday (04:17)
We Wrote Letters Everyday
Well, no one was too upset
You know we were married in the war
And I went with him to Pennsylvania and California
But he went out the Pacific
And I came back to Chicago to work on the railroad
And we wrote letters every day
Which were later thrown away
And God knows what we wrote or what they said
But this is probably how they read
I left the letters behind
In the basement of the apartment building when we moved
For the mice to nibble on
I wonder how long they lasted
And we wrote letters every day
Which were later thrown away
And God knows what we wrote or what they said
But this is probably how they read
Now, at my wedding, my husband didn't have his close family there as I indicated
He came from a family of priests
At least, there were a lot of priests in his family
And so, eight priests presided over our wedding
Eight priests, it looked impressive
But it didn't sound very good
A gaggle of priests
Or they were like crows around an overly ornate park bench up there
They all had fine voices
But, and I mean this respectfully
They didn't match pitch
Thinking that each one of them was the one in the right
So they made some strange note choices
Listen...
04 Seven Silver Curses (09:20)
Seven Silver Curses
My little sister had a glass of wine
No doubt a glass of wine too many
"I bet he's out right now with his Nazi whore
That's right, I said it, that's what she is, and when he
Finally saunters back at three or four,
Don't let him in, put the chain on the door."
But of course I'd let him in, the jerk.
Now my silly little sister went to some vlachos coffee-grind reader
Ad had a gypsy glint in her eye when she'd smirk
"Since that's how you feel, I know what to do
Make sure she gets fixed before she takes him from you."
It's a hot August night and my sister and I are creeping down south Halsted
Towards a storefront past a storefront stoop and a moon
And a star and a placard that says Madame Maria's.
"Tell me your troubles,
But five dollars first."
That's what she said
And of course, I thought the worst
Charlatan, phony
Fraud gypsy bitch whose Greek was bad and English was worse
I held tight to my purse
My sister did the talking and I looked down
And tapped my foot and sort of twisted on one heel.
Madame pointed to corner
And twisted her shawl,
Uncovered a dusty old crystal ball
I peered in despite myself
Somewhere on some love seat, my husband was there
Paying court to his mistress and stroking her hair
I saw it for myself
"I can't believe it!" I cried
Madame Maria said, "Well, I had a notion
So before you came in, I prepared half a potion
Now you must do the other half
I wrote you a list
You must get seven part-silver curses made special out of bullet bits by some Pollock I know in Evergreen Park
And dip them in the potion and drop them in Buckingham Fountain at 3:13 on Friday morning
And then she'll be gone, you'll be rid of her!"
Quick, for the potion, we have to get three dozen crabapples that fell off a raggedy old tree right in the southwestern corner of Columbus Park!
Faster, we have to go up to Caputo's Produce and Fruit Market on Harlem and get the garden snake that lives in the banana bin!
Hurry, we have to get the mercury out of the old thermometer they have through the north-facing doors
To the left by the shoe-shine boys in the lobby of the Monadnock building!
And don't be late, for you must get the silver out of the teeth of one George Karmalitis
Who as we speak lies dead under a dirty wool blanket in the basement of the morgue of Laretto hospital
The silver teeth of a man killed by a jealous wife!
I wasn't always an old maid
I didn't always walk down the street
And have the children yell at me Spinny Spinny the Spinster
And try to knock the hat off my head
I had a fiancee, or he led me to believe I'd soon be his fiancee
And I did believe him, as I had every right to
And I'd put on my best dress and we'd go dance at all the dances
And I'd never let the boys from the barracks cut in
They'd come out of Great Lakes, usually straight off the farm anyway
And I'd never really let any of the country club beaus get a chance
Those cream-colored summer suits were never cut to my taste anyhow
And those Hyde Park fraternity fellas were out as a matter of course
I don't enjoy a man in red, so certainly not maroon, that's for sure
I only had eyes for my guy, see
But one night he had said he wouldn't be able to take me
As he hurt his shoulder and had his arm in a sling
But I went anyway and saw him with another woman
And she was wearing his ring
The silver still smelled and smelted down quick into the copper or lead or whatever else it was
And when the metal was still soft and hot you'd engrave the curse into it with a stylus from an old whale bone
I thought for a second of what I might write
Something a little different, but with the correct sort of spite
One of them asked panayia mou to make that blonde's hair fall straight out
The potion was ready back at my apartment
And my sister and I mumbled and crossed ourselves when we dropped the curses in
And I thought of my husband
My husband and her
And I thought of me and him, of what we were
I thought of our wedding day
And I was happy, very simply happy
Do you hear it
A modest young woman's simple contentment
It's probably a sunny day, and I think it was
The birds were chirping
And I felt like I was dancing on air
But not very far off the ground
I wonder if I knew even then that things wouldn't always be perfect
That one day he'd seek solace in the arms of another woman
And that to win him back, to win him back, I'd have to do this
3:11!, 3:12!, 3:13!
On a hot August night everyone is asleep
But the crows were watching, witching and my temple was twitching
Twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch
Fountain, sweet fountain
Fountain, sweet fountain
Let your water react and turn the curses to fact and come true
Fountain, sweet fountain
Fountain, sweet fountain
Let your water react and turn the curses to fact and come true
And they do
The instant we dropped them in, our hearts started to race
And a wind came up off the lake; make no mistake, we felt something released out into the city
And I swore
And I swooned
As I swept back somehow to Austin, I don't remember how
Scared of what I had wrought
But terrified, I didn't get what I had sought
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
Oh Jimmy, where you been so long
And as the clock struck eight the next morning
My husband was next to me with a smile on his face
And I looked, no blond hairs on his pajamas
And it was as if I had been awakened from a bad dream
05 Guns Under the Counter (04:31)
Guns Under the Counter
"Well, good for you.
But we have something too."
So said my aunt
A bowling alley and lunch counter
Filled with fellas on their lunch break
From the Western Electric plant at a slant across the street
And next door when So-and-So's men would come in, and the man himself very often
It was guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter every time
And bowling on the second floor
Very often he was there himself
And I, of course, had a special small ball as a little girl,
And didn't I grow up, didn't I grow up to be captain of the Morton girls bowling team? I did!
Though I don't attach much importance to that now, or then
Then riding the old Garfield El downtown
And on up to State Street
And back to guns under the counter
Guns under the counter every time
Guns under the counter
And bowling on the second floor
I never liked Douglas park
And no one likes it now
But that's neither here nor there
There, or here
West of Crawford, where it is I stayed
Chicago straights alliterates
North, and south
I lived in the Ms
But it was down on the south side
Dr. Peter Pane and his brother had their doughnut factory
And I mention it now because
That one day
Now I wasn't there, we were in Davenport at that time
Some north side Irish bullets came zipping through that window
In Cicero
Never stand at a window
And past the counter
Looking for those men
Who had their guns behind the counter
And you could smell the boiled cabbage on those bullets
One of them managed to hit a young pinsetter in the leg
Wouldn't you know it
But luckily Panagoulis
Dr. Peter Pane
Was there to see to it
He took some special blackberry filling right out of his lunch bag
And applied it to the young man's wound
You see, Dr. Peter Pane was an interesting man
And an even more interesting doctor
As he would use no material or remedy that wasn't used in the manufacture
Of his doughnuts down on 82nd and Kedzie with his brother.
But he tempered this by the fact that he would rarely use ingredients
That didn't have some medicinal purpose
Or so he thought
Here in the doughnut factory
They have confectioner's sugar
So sweet it was caustic
And chocolate so bitter that it could kill typhus
Glazing so shiny
It could set back glaucoma
And filling so filling,
You didn't need stitches
The same special blackberry filling that was applied to the young man's wound
Blackberry filling that came straight from Dr. Peter Pane's lunch bag
We were in Davenport
With a big restaurant downtown
And I once kept a jackrabbit in the back yard
And I'd walk across the river to Rock Island to Greek school
On a fine fall day
And I'd look up at the sky
And down at the river
But Davenport changed its name to Hooverville
So to speak, and we had to go to Chicago to move in with my aunt
07 The Wayward Granddaughter (06:23)
The Wayward Granddaughter
He said "Come on now babe
Let's take a little drive
Go slumming down the Carson's in my black X-5."
Samples from the Clinique counter and up the escalator
And then a knowing glance from last night's cute, talkative waiter
Surprise, surprise
Going through five hundred king Egyptian size count satin cotton sheets
A smirk hello from the tanning salon boy
My man mumbled, he realized
"They told me that she cheats."
"Oh, don't you start! Jealous heart."
Jealous heart. Jealous heart
I put one foot forward and one foot back
My hand upon my hip
I gave my hair a flip
I can't help it
What's he think I got all this loving for
Well guess what
He don't pay my bills no more
Well I guess
All this stuff
That'll befall ya and bedevil ya
And try ya
I'll move back in with Yaiyai
My daughter, we named her Maureen
Can you believe it
I never believed it, or her
Because she called you Connie
The Don Juan he, my husband, loved redheards and thought this name
Would turn his baby into the same
And each time I see you, Connie
Yes?
I say God bless, my dear departed Peter
That he never had to meet her
His beautiful granddaughter who dyed
It would have killed him again
Her gorgeous red-brown hair black
When she turned 15 behind my back
You lived with me at that time
Yes, I did
You were such a cute and smart and obedient and happy and pretty little kid
My beautiful granddaughter who dyed
Her gorgeous red-brown hair black
When she turned fifteen behind my back
And which Kevin were you dating
I mean letting take advantage of you then
the black one, or the white one
Once upon a time there were two Kevins
You mean two jerks
Once upon a time there were two Kevins
And being with one Kevin was being in one heaven
And not being with the other swell was being in another, well
Kevin and Kevin were best friends since seven
La la la-la-la la la
When they met at Joey Meyer's
Red White and Blue Demon basketball seminar tutorial clinic day care camp
For underprivileged kids
And overstimulated brats.
And they're both wearing vintage throw-back fourty five dollar
Nineteen eighty three White Sox hats
And now at H-F
Point guard and shooting guard
And now at H-F
Point guard and shooting guard
And the drill team shouting themselves deaf
And then back in the back yard
Yours, Yaiyai
With the one and then the next night with the other one and one big secret
I mean two
But little did I know that they knew
They knew
And would slap each other on the back
About what it was they'd do
They knew
They knew
Well, we can talk about it, Connie
But often, memories are better off sung
Remember when you were young
Remember when I was young
Remember when you were young
Remember when I was young
La la la...
La la la...
08 Slavin' Away (06:54)
Slavin' away
Slavin' away
All for you my love
And i've nothin to show for it
Cept my dusty old book full of pictures
A dusty old book
Tell me a story
Bout how i wasn't so tired
From my slavin' away
I ran off
Put on corduroy knickers that i got from the coal shovelin' kid
And hitchhiked in a rickety old ford
Hitchhiked in a rattly old norton side car
Down strange roads
In the purrin' rain, as the poet put it
On up to st. Paul
On a cold day in the middle of the fall
And they picked me up for not wearin a dress
And suspended my sentence
If i wore somethin with a strap that was pink
And i scrubbed up on somebody's sink
So now i catch the canadian pacific
And not be too specific, just somewhere up north
And get into lumber and slumber when i like
And in the spring ride down into cheyenne on my bike
I looked out the window
And i stuck my head out the door
And the snow was melting so slow...
And the sky was light but so gray...
Slavin' away
And all for nothin' my love
Cookin and washin in the morning
And startin at 9:25
I assemble six boxes of little plastic christmas trees
And put in the blue leds
On kid toy cell phones with borg batteries
And then on to the sewing machine
Stick the labels on purple t-shirts
And the arms on pull-over jumpers for the uk
Slavin' away
All for you my love
And i've nothin to show for it
I've nothin to show for it
I could see her lookin in the mirror at me
Wonderin' if it wasn't plain for everyone to see
Nothin ever seemed to turn out how it might be
I could see her doubting now that all had gone and went
That anything she got was equal what that she'd spent
That she never seemed to get back what that she'd lent
Anyway they did have a son
And by the time he was married and i played at his wedding too at holy trinity
I was choir director myself
Rehearsals in the basement twice a week
I demanded we'd be in peak condition
And everything seemed to be going quite well
I got along well with the priest...
09 The Garfield El (04:23)
The Garfield El
Faster, hammers
Faster, hammers
Churn and turn into my late train to my lost love
Ring away today, stick, bruise into my felt, or so I felt
I found a skeleton tooth in the junk drawer
And I mean to open the folding green and white door
And take a late train to my lost love.
Faster, hammers!
Faster, hammers!
Listen to those dead pianos, pins stuck in their hearts
Clang tap bell pedal down dead wood chipped and dull dark steel
Rattling and chattering and chilly on a damp November afternoon
On tracks one and two
And twelve and thirteen
On that ribbon spinning and computer colors.
Tick tacks on round wire
Spun steel spark on three rail thin lines
See a minor, a little girl
Ask if she would like for instance some fudge
But I didn't budge, and said I didn't care
I wanted to sit, and I wanted to stare
Spin steel, tick tack on three little strings made three little rails made one note clunk
Three rails squeaking and sputtering down the west side
I found a skeleton tooth in the junk drawer and I mean to open the folding green and white door
And take a late train to my lost love
Faster, hammers!
Faster, hammers!
Chatter down the tracks, you thumb tack smiley skull teeth
Ticking five dollar throwaway pianos past
A late train to my lost love
Listen to those dead pianos, pins stuck in their hearts
Clang tap bell pedal down dead wood chipped and dull dark steel
Rattling and chattering and chilly on a damp November afternoon
On tracks one and two
And twelve and thirteen
On that ribbon spinning and computer colors.
Tick tacks on round wire
Spun steel spark on three rail thin lines
Late, by act of Congress and blue all the way to Forest Park,
And this ribbon spinning and computer color
Into a public transport for everyone to hear and get on track
And back to my lost love
Faster, hammers!
Faster, hammers!
We're almost there
Faster, hammers!
We're almost there
I'd like to tell you a story, kids
but instead I'll change the subject
Listen to this tune, it sounds like a condolence card
Bought at the last minute for someone you can't stand
For someone you never liked
And isn't it cute
La la la...
Listen to this tune I'm playing now, kids
Does it seem sad
Does it remind you of when
10 A Candymaker's Knife in My Handbag (04:48)
A Candymaker's Knife in my Handbag
A night out in the tropics
Turned out I couldn't cope
After the School of Fancy Cookery
With Antoinette Pope
I learned brazing and saucing, meringue and sift
Knead, flute and flour
Each Thursday for an hour
Cobblers and plum cakes, tarts savory and sweet
A candymaker's knife in my handbag
A candymaker's knife in my handbag
Well I learned brazing and saucing, meringue and sift
Knead, flute and flour
Each Thursday for an hour
Cobblers and plum cakes, tarts savory and sweet
A candymaker's knife in my handbag
A candymaker's knife in my handbag
That night I was to meet my husband's father, for the very first time
I wore the scarf he sent to me
French silk, scarlet blue and cream
He sits, he waits, a coffee on his knee
I wonder if it's as bad as it might seem
Zapped by the Zombie
Zapped, zapped by the Zombie
Zapped by the Zombie in the two-door Dodge
Twice-baked brioche and pastry pockets
And lock its two-door Dodge
Zapped by the Zombie
Zapped, zapped by the Zombie
Zapped by the Zombie in the two-door Dodge
And I did not fail
To bust off a nail as the Dodge door handle dodges my hand
Delicate, delicate hold my hand
Delicate nectarine upside-down chiffon cake
Dodge down the downtown loop the loop lightly
Hazelnut baby loaves
Hazelnut baby loaves
Hold my hand inside-out upside-down marzipan Milanese
My brain is a blur
Hodge-podge - cardinal slice - two-door, brand new
What am I gonna do
'Cause on the street the amber lights were hellish hot
And the wind in the windows was not giving air
And tropical Napeolons
But it was too late and I didn't care
And I didn't care
Because first I went to meet Dr. Christopolous and his wife Claudette
Who at the time was my close girlfriend
They picked my up in their brand-new Dodge
And we went to Trader Vic's, or Mr. Rick's
And I ordered, like the others, a Zombie
And it bombed me, it just bombed me
And when we got to the stoop my father-in-law said "Were you attacked?"
My aunt, being helpful, said something that made my heart just go sunk
And with a look on her face like something had stunk
"She's just drunk!" she hissed
I reached for the arm of the armchair and missed
A night out in the tropics
Turned out I couldn't cope
After the School of Fancy Cookery
With Antoinette Pope
I wore the scarf he sent to me
French silk, scarlet blue and cream
He sits, he waits, a coffee on his knee
I wonder if it's as bad as it might seem
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