Product Description

This brother-sister duo balance melody, originality, and a seemingly endless arsenal of instrumental ideas. Their songs often transcend categories, redefining the pop song through rapidly changing tempos and inventive sound selections. This record, their first on Thrill Jockey, features some of the finest, catchiest Furnace compositions to date. Compelling, beautiful, strange, dense, and magical, "Widow City" is musical terrain entirely of the duo's making. Vinyl is a double LP in an old style tip-on gatefold jacket, and includes a coupon for a free MP3 download of the entire album.

Track Listing

1. Philadelphia Grand Jury, The
2. Duplexes Of The Dead
3. Automatic Husband
4. Ex-Guru
5. Clear Signal From Cairo
6. My Egyptian Grammar
7. Old Hag Is Sleeping, The
8. Japanese Slippers
9. Navy Nurse
10. Uncle Charlie
11. Right By Conquest
12. Restorative Beer
13. Wicker Whatnots
14. Cabaret Of The Seven Devils
15. Pricked In The Heart
16. Widow City

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #82142 in Music
• Released on: 2007-10-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .15 pounds

Amazon.com
On their fifth full length (and first for indie stalwarts Thrill Jockey), Fiery Furnaces have finally made an album that reconciles their need to make literate, strangely fashioned art-pop with their pummeling and super rocked-out live shows. It's tempting to wish that at least a few of these puzzling tunes could have fewer parts and to concentrate on the pleasant melodic elements more, or maybe just not switch back and forth between the piano-based songs and the guitar-based ones. But that's a bit like showing up at a MENSA party and complaining that folks are using too many big words; baroque, over-fashioned, and over-thought post-modern pop is what this duo does. On Widow City, the good-looking brother-sister team does it better than they ever have. This record's delightful and wholly original; no one else could possibly have made it. Reveling in a playground based on distorted riffs and deep space synths from the era of "album rock," their distended sounds swim about like hundreds of liberated sea monkeys. --Mike McGonigal

Customer Reviews

YES, just YES
This album has completely exceeded all expectations. My background with this band is: Gallowsbirds Bark: LOVE IT, EP: LOVE IT, Blueberry Boat: HATE IT, Bitter Tea: LUKEWARM, Grandma Album: NEVER HEARD IT.

Here I was hoping for a return to the more straightforward and rocking Gallowsbirds Bark/EP type of stuff, but this is even better... they've somehow managed to take all of the freaky weird prog stuff, meld it with some dirty guitar and raw banging drums, and produced this: an endless cornucopia of tweaked-out curio that walks the perfect line between out there and in there. The weirdness has now been taken to a whole new level. Like Michael Jackson surpasses the bad barrier to become good again, the Fiery Furnaces have surpassed the weird barrier to become... Im not sure, but it just seems a LOT more palatable now.

It probably has to do with the guitar: Bitter Tea suffered from a lack of it. They also seem to have gotten a better grip on song lengths: both Bitter Tea and Blueberry Boat suffered from songs that went on at least 2 or 3 minutes too long. The genre hopping is still intact, but it's way more fun this time around: at points, Widow City almost sounds like Ween cubed, complete with kooky slowed-down vocals (but less the overuse of backwards ones, thankfully).

One thing I disagree with that I've read in other reviews is that this album should be enjoyed in small doses. NO WAY! To me, this needs to be listened to in its entirety, preferably on a good set of headphones. The centerpiece as I hear it is "Navy Nurse", it builds up to that point, and then the chorus kicks in and it's pure bliss. Right there it just smacks you over the head how sweet this stuff is, and that's not to say that "Navy Nurse" is the best song... in fact, there really isn't a weak song to be found here.

My only complaint with Widow City is the way it ends. The abrupt ending doesn't work for me here.... a drawn out chord would have been better, allowing a few seconds to digest this aural feast.

There's really no one like the fiery furnaces
I can't help but be surprised by these guys at every album they release and they release so many. Matthew Friedberger even has a few solo releases that are even nuttier. They are one of the most original and interesting groups making music today. Because you can't pin them down, you can't describe them to people you just have to force them to listen. Even turned down low so you can talk to people in the car, you can't but help hear amazing changes, quick piano bits, a hard rockout guitar riff or a crazy bass driven melodic rhythm. Eleanor really has a unique voice and just floats through every track, driven by whatever it is that motivates her and I'm sure it's something no one can now but her and her talented brother, Matthew
I really like the EP album and Bluberry Boat a lot but this, I think the more I hear it sticks with me. They've found a wonderful new creative level and I hope they never stop making records cause I'll surely have to keep buying them, just like a tv show you just have to know where it's going, the same with them, I can't wait to see what they do next.

definitely my favorite thus far
I love these guys. It's so awesome to have a band working in the rock idiom and yet bringing so much of their own thing to it. They take some unbelievable risks that aren't always entirely successful (e.g. grandma) but when they do the payoff is well worth it. 'Widow City' is the Fiery Furnaces album I've been waiting for. It captures the heavy rock sound of their live shows, mixes in the resourceful sonic exploration of their studio work and applies it to some fantastic new material. It's a wonderful record, albeit a demanding one. Such a dense piece of work, you might feel like you've gotten the point by the middle. Just give it a rest, go outside and listen to the birds chirp for awhile, and then come back and start from where you left off. Don't give up on it until you've given the Zeppelin stomp of "Navy Nurse" or the Beatles via Mutantes "Restorative Beer" a chance to sink in. Definitely some of their absolute best material. And of course it's always a pleasure to hear Eleanor Friedberger's singing. I don't know how she pulls off some of the phrasing her brother throws at her. Her decidedly unfashionable (i.e. un-Feisty) vocals aren't going be heard in any ipod commercials anytime soon, but she's capable of some really challenging and truly beautiful work. I'm just so happy a record like this came about. It's so easy to get down on music in general these days (Britney this, RIAA that) but this album (for me at least) is a real affirmation of how great rock music has been and continues to be.