The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City

I want to tell you a story, a brief childhood memory that helps illustrate the multi-layered sonic idleness of Mr. Matthew Friedberger. I believe it was 1984, and one afternoon I found myself lost inside the 21-inch television, chasing the borderline exploits of a salmon. Pin the salmon was, in fact, the absolute protagonist of an old documentary broadcast on local TV. This daredevil of the waters had the unresolved look of Angelino Alfano, and a life more complicated than the immunity award for high institutional positions. Steel temper and cold blood in climbing streams and the river's harshness, amidst countless surprises, made him a champion worthy of appearing in the specialty at the Los Angeles Olympics. Before ending up on the table, of course, with coarse salt, sugar, lemon, and olive oil. Pin would cut through hydrogen and oxygen like a knife through Parma ham, pushing, continuing resolutely, and blissfully dodging fishing hooks and limestone rocks. New Yorker Matt, the mind behind the brother\ sister duo Fiery Furnaces, has an adventurous spirit equal to Pin. And he can spit out pre-established (musical) rules better than Alfano and friends...

It isn’t too difficult to get lost in the "widow city" of the Fiery Furnaces, amidst ancient alleyways and new audio buildings. The seven minutes of the opener The Philadelphia Grand Jury are enough: the drum's syncopated hammer, Eagles period Hotel California guitars, Beatles melody flirting with hip-hop graffiti in the Eighties New York of Keith Haring, and a symphonic antenna shifted to the East. The sixteen tracks of Widow City may turn out to be a disorienting and uncertain experience for delicate eardrums, almost as much as a film by Rocco that deeply touches our passionate eye. In the single Ex-guru, brother Matt and sister Eleanor Friedberger mix Beck playing with Roxy Music a cover of the Jacksons from Destiny. Including orchestrations by Van Dyke Parks, and head-splitting drum rolls by Bonzo. And all in 2' 42". The city of the Fiery Furnaces may be widowed, but I doubt it refuses promiscuity.

The liquid keyboards and cotton candy harp of My Egyptian Grammar nourish the romantic Kinks Pop (in electro clothing). Clear Signal From Cairo has a heavy beginning, heavy artillery of drums and valve amplifiers, and it mutates into the persuasive nursery rhyme refrain of Eleanor amidst avant-garde variations, percussive delirium and neurotic chants, to finally end in glory with the fleeting final gallop of guitars. The Old Hag Is Sleeping is a collage that copy-pastes Residents while escorting the funk/synthetic of Prince from 1999 to school, amidst rough beats and processed guitars; while sister Friedberger's ?femme fatale' singing continues to ?perform', and changes register as in the most insidious of noirs. Jimmy Page crushes ribs in the pastoral cabaret, between Mary Poppins and Bowie, of Navy Nurse. The restorative melancholy of Restorative Beer moves innocent riffs and baroque regret in the swamp. Uncle Charlie is a psychotic hard/blues at the speed of light, which could generate justifiable envy in Jack White of the so-called White Stripes..Wicker Whatnots, finally: a kind of Frankenstein falling apart on the way home, with the dad demiurge anxiously waiting in the Very Evil Castle of Rignano. Instruments that self-sustain in the organized (dis)chaos of an omnivorous and carnivorous musical Babel, the rock opera that finds its own center when, paradoxically, it's built on dissimilar and mirrored sound fragments.

An album by Matt & Eleanor is therefore more comfortable than the last Sanremo canonized by Pippo, more gut-wrenching (in the sense that it tears them on stage from rabbits or chickens) than Richie Benson in concert, but less approachable than trans Andreia in Rio (provided you don't use Ronaldo’s hair regrowth lotion). Now excuse me, I should take my Bobtail King Kerry for a walk.