Album Review: I'm Going Away

The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away (2009)

(If you haven't heard of The Fiery Furnaces, it might be a good idea to head over to their allmusic page - or wherever, you're smart enough to google - and familiarize yourself with the out-there qualities of the Friedbergers. A quick list that will give you a glimpse: intense concept albums revolving around electronic pulses and pirates; oral history album featuring their grandma; a live album pastiche work that is culled from various live performances of the given song, none of which really match the melody / structure of the album composition. Quirky, to say the least. And then came this album...).

The latest disc from the dynamic sibling duo of tuneful experimental composition is a curveball of simplicity, and as such, widely reported as the most accessible thing they've recorded in their eight album career. The kitchen-sink timbre has been largely dropped in favor of a piano-rock foundation; obscurantist lyrics of born-again dogs and hieroglyphics exchanged (for the most part) for straight up tales of sing-along woe. Polyrhythmic post-bop forays - okay, some of those are still here - take a backseat to impossibly catchy choruses, repeated in a Police-like fashion until they're appropriately bored in skull. This is by any stretch a pared down, laid-back and seemingly unweird exposition by one of my very favorite bands. And DAMN does it work.

Don't get me wrong - the wacky tendencies still permeate even these bare tunes, they're just not as overtly scattershot as in past efforts. Multiple key changes, alternating tempos, odd time signatures, jazz-funk breakdowns all manage to poke their head in here and there, but this time around they are pleasant accents to fundamentally solid melodies. And in one of my favorite "moves" of the album, the fourth and eleventh tracks share lyrics, but not in the same order. And their melodies / tempos / styles are entirely dissimilar. It took me about ten listens to realize this. In what may be the best answer yet to G'N'R's "Don't Cry (Alt. Lyrics)," The Fiery Furnaces have crafted "Charmaine Champagne (Alt. Song)." Yep, it's a different sort of wacky this time around, and in the bigger picture, verse-chorus-verse and repeated segments in general becomes the bizarre.

This cup overfloweth with highlights. In album order:

"I'm Going Away" - The opening titular track is actually a rearranged traditional that is now firmly stamped with frenetic FF-ness.

"Drive to Dallas" - a super mellow borderline jazz ballad backed by ringing piano that also features a maniacal bridge and a fake-ending speed-up session.

"The End is Near" - a soul ballad of "Lean on Me" proportions that would not be out of place in a Donny Hathaway album, were it not so much of a downer.

"Charmane Champagne" - Super catchy spastic rocker that hums like Tourette's. Exhibit 1A of Eleanor perfectly cramming her lines with too-many-yet-perfectly-rhythmic syllables. "She's gonna get me folked up/Fairly beat" will echo through your head for days but always bring a smile.

"Cut the Cake" - great return to ballad for the pacing of the album and nice use of dissonant giuitar accents / solo

"Even in the Rain" - routinely gets described as "too catchy for its own good." Features a ton of key changes and takes repetition to a special place. :)

"Staring at the Steeple" - a dark, dissonant rumbling bassline number that just completely shifts gears and launches into lounge time funk-disco-jazz breakouts. Strangely enough, this overtly weird song - have I made this clear yet? - stands out.

"Ray Bouvier" - another catchy chorus raucous bar number with a nice crystal synth guitar solo.

"Keep Me in the Dark" - a borderline Lennon-McCartney composition in that it alternates between a minor key, almost spy-music riff and a superbly upbeat chorus.

"Lost at Sea" - the saddest, greatest piano ballad of relationship/self-disillusion you'll hear. The gem of the album, to my ears.

"Cups and Punches" - the aforementioned very Pavementy-sounding laid back reworking of Charmain Champagne. Very weird, complete with wails.

"Take Me Around Again" - the sing-songy closer that Beck says remind her of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. There's definitely a chorus line / jazz hands / Broadway musical feel to it, and it goes on long enough and repetitively enough that you halfway expect band members to be taking their bows throughout the song. It allegedly alludes to 1920s popular song choruses. As much of a trainwreck this sounds, it's a really kitschy cool end to the album and unfailingly makes me smile.

There ya have it - a fantastic top-to-bottom album that I've probably spun twenty times over the past few days, and its infectious tunes / repetitive choruses still fail to repel me. And when it's not playing, it continues in my head. The Fiery Furnaces have pulled off something rather neat here, and I think they know it - there are reports that, in characteristically weird fashion, they like this album so much that they plan on covering it (one set of covers by each sibling) with brand new melodies for their next TWO albums. Holy goofiness. Anyways, I'm a card-carrying pew-sitter w/r/t these guys, so I'm far from objective - I love almost any off-the-wall insanity that they throw out there - but this LP really manages to exhibit their experimental edge while remaining entirely tuneful. It's a great, great intro to the band, a little too recently released for me to declare a desert-island kinda record, but highly, highly recommended.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Lost at Sea"