Eleanor Friedberger (of the Fiery Furnaces)

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/eleanorfriedberger.jpg

out July 12th, 2011: http://www.mergerecords.com/store/store_detail.php?catalog_id=799

Tracklist:

1. My Mistakes
2. Inn of the Seventh Ray
3. Heaven
4. Scenes from Bensonhurst
5. Roosevelt Island
6. Glitter Gold Year
7. One-Month Marathon
8. I Won’t Fall Apart on You Tonight
9. Owl's Head Park
10. Early Earthquake

this first single is fantastic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-F2DNcvqps&feature=related

nice cover - boy has she got some hair

Partly worried the nomalness of this first single is a sneaky attempt to lure me into her web where she'll spring a fucked-up Fiery Furnaces style album on me, but for now I'm happy just to hear her do something that's a-okay by me.

The album's pretty good stuff. Not terribly challenging, but sneakily sophisticated.

glad to hear this, now looking forward to it.

I have such an unexpected visceral hatred of her voice (and most, though not all, of FF stuff) and will have to devote some time, someday, to really pinning down why...

My wife doesn't like her voice either. She says there's something affected about it, like she's putting on a slight English accent or trying to sing like Chrissie Hynde or something.

hm, her vocals are probably my favorite thing about the fiery furnaces (who i've never quite warmed up to, despite many attempts)

I like her vocals too. I think few singers could handle those long-winded, quirky, sung-spoken parts that her brother comes up with and make them actually interesting to listen to.

love her vocals and am loving this album. streaming on npr
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/05/137475727/first-listen-eleanor-friedberger-last-summer?ps=mh_fl

My wife doesn't like her voice either. She says there's something affected about it, like she's putting on a slight English accent

i sometimes feel this way, too, that her delivery is overly mannered, uptight, her diction too precise, her phrasing too sharp, the control exercised too evident. like the song is a cookie she's carefully biting her way through before watchful eyes, mindful of crumbs. and the accent thing, here audible in "umbrella" and the way "swear" become "sweah", the edge of a steempunk music hall style. her approach sometimes keeps me at a distance when it comes to the fiery furnaces, but it doesn't bother me here, doesn't keep me from liking the song. it's slight, but i like its delicate, mechanical propulsion, the way her precision-tuned language bounces along on top.

and 80s sax, of course

liking this! at least liking the mp3 "my mistakes"

Agree that her delivery is one the mannered side, and I do hear the slight English accent thing at times. But neither of those things bother me that much really. Mostly when I found the FFs tiresome it's for other reasons, such as the lyrics, or just not being excited by a particular riff which they play a few too many times, or by the sudden transition to some twee Casiotone synth interlude in the middle of an otherwise awesome song.

love that first track.

tyler, have you tried to get into Bitter Tea? that was the one that did it for me, and the only one i still listen to.

i have that one! i'll give it another spin. i remember liking benton harbor blues (?) quite a bit, but not getting into the rest of it.

i have a friend who's tried to get me into them for the last eight years or something...i even saw them live! i don't know, i like them, i just haven't fallen in love.

it's a wonderful record, this one.

I do not like the production on that single at all

I'm getting a little bit of Aaron Neville in her voice.

i'm not

It's subtle, and mostly a joke, but the delivery of at least a few words hinted at it to me.

Widow City is the album that did it for me. Didn't much like the last one, though.

I honestly thought the second track was saying "You promised to take me to the end of the seventh grade"

awesome, thanks for the link mizzell. new single is great, love her style.

this is a pretty crucial summer pop single?
i am not hearing any aaron neville though. i know it's lazy calling singers patti-smith-ers, but it does feel like, in being conversational more than melodic she is doing that thing well & taking it somewhere

Does she still sing like Ray Davies granddaughter

Ok, so there's an *urgency* to the way she sings every single line that reminds me of the way my 4-year-old tells me that it's VERY IMPORTANT that I look at the stick that he just picked up because it is a VERY IMPORTANT STICK. The music behind her isn't bad. It reminds me melodically, oddly, of Eno who's being discussed elsewhere and whose Desert Island Selection has been on my turntable lately...

She needs an Oblique Strategy Card that says, "If the melody line is essentially two notes, add five more notes."

I'm liking 'My Mistakes'. Especially love the dogtanian bits.

i'm all about this. i should really finally get around to listening to the fiery furnaces. loved gallowsbird's bark and blueberry boat but i just stopped checking them out. didn't know the brother had a solo album too.

he's releasing eight albums this year

agree the music is pretty good - but she really needs to find some sort of melody in those vocal lines - they all blend into one another.

Last Summer is getting great reviews almost everywhere. i did listen to it once but was more back round music, need to give it a proper listen.

yeah there aren't really any weak trax here. it kinda peaks in the middle with Scenes From Bensonhurst and Roosevelt Island but i love the whole thing, especially the sad little Wall-E vacuum noises during One-Month Marathon.

"inn of the seventh ray" is a restaurant in topanga canyon.

http://innoftheseventhray.com/

(haven't heard this record yet except for "my mistakes," which i love.)

he's releasing eight albums this year

― mizzell, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 21:12 (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

assumed this was a joke but no

yeah, just released video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRUOoSKt6Kg

i sometimes feel this way, too, that her delivery is overly mannered, uptight, her diction too precise, her phrasing too sharp, the control exercised too evident. like the song is a cookie she's carefully biting her way through before watchful eyes, mindful of crumbs

Well put. I liked "Heaven" and "I Won't Fall Apart on Me Tonight." I'm more turned off by the rather monotonous music: that constant banging piano.

I love this album. Also, nerdy of me to notice, but I think the sequencing is perfect. I'm also glad it isn't the endurance-test length of most Fiery Furnaces albums. "One Month Marathon" is my favorite but I really like the whole thing.

"Roosevelt Island"!

I like that tune but hate the clavinet.

Oh man how can you

Sounds awkward. Love the swirly stuff going around the two-minute mark though.

i sometimes feel this way, too, that her delivery is overly mannered, uptight, her diction too precise, her phrasing too sharp, the control exercised too evident.

I find this the most captivating thing about her -- it accounts for the majority of her character/personality -- so yeah, finding it offputting really would be a challenge. Nothing about it feels at all affected to me, though. (Even if it is mystifying how much it comes off "New York," instead of Illinois; is it just because she feels like a super-prim Patti Smith?)

I've started imagining that she speaks in this cadence in everyday life, sorta like Christopher Walken.

finally heard this album via Spotify, it's great, doesn't sound like the Fiery Furnaces at all. she breaths a different life into her own songs. at around 45 minutes it's a perfect length.

I like when she sings "I'm gonna wrap the night (?) around your neck, slice off your head, daddy"

Like Hurting I heard "you promised to take me to the end of the 7th grade", and thought that was a good lyric at first.

I've been trying in vain to place what album the cover reminds me of. A little bit of The River, but there's also something about the font across the top. Paging Alex in NYC...

http://0.tqn.com/d/classicrock/1/0/y/U/springsteen_river.jpg

Still really loving this album. I thought my days of caring about anything Fiery Furnaces were long gone.

this record seems overlooked in eoy lists

going with "A Long Walk" in my trax poll, since it's probably the most Friedbergesque on the record but "Never Is A Long Time" is p devastating too, also "Open Season" is v v nice

Yeah it's a great album. "All Known Things" is the one that sticks with me.

i was thinking the same thing re: New View missing on all these lists. also, fun fact: when I saw Chris Cohen last weekend his keyboard player was the guy from Eleanor Friedberger's band. excellent in both!

I liked this album too but I guess it came out pretty early in the year because it feels like a 2015 record to me

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91OaAzEQZWL._SX522_.jpg

Eleanor Friedberger has announced her new album, which is titled Rebound and will be out May 4 via Frenchkiss. It was inspired by a post-Election Day 2018 extended trip to Greece to explore family heritage. The title of the album, specifically, comes from a late-night goth club in Athens, as she explains:

After a month in Athens I asked my friend, the Greek musician Σtella, “What’s one thing I have to do before I leave?” After some long and careful consideration she smiled and said, you have to go to Rebound. It’s a time warp; kind of an 80s goth disco where everyone does the chicken dance; you’ll love it… but it’s only open on Saturdays after 3:00 AM.” Rebound proved to be a revelation in terms of finding the sound and energy for my fourth album. The club was very dark and despite the no smoking signs, like everywhere in Athens, it was very smoky. The ‘chicken dance’ Stella mentioned was a solitary one. I copied the slouchy strut, moving back and forth in line, swinging my arms in time to the music that at first sounded like Joy Division or maybe The Cure, but never revealed itself– one could only assume it to be knock-off by an unknown Baltic band. It was alienating and exhilarating.

Nice!

I really like this!

def more synthy/drum machine but it still feels like her stuff, it doesn't feel like as much of a left turn as i expected based on the description/copy

it's almost like..i dunno, comparing a 70s singer songwriter album to an album they released in 82

Not that fussed about the new song but still excited for this. The last record was a bit mellow - didn't really get me like the previous two - but A Long Walk is an amazing track.

she has the dopest album covers

That's true.

always curious to hear what she has to say, like the sound of this, very clean

she's a singular singer

i like the sound of this
https://youtu.be/wmjcSz8aV1Y

Yeah it’s a good one. (Does she live in L.A. now?)

nice, she is very consistent

look forward to seeing her play on friday!

(Does she live in L.A. now?)

As far as I know she lives upstate New York but just . This interview made me sad: she had to move out of Brooklyn cause she couldn't afford it any more

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/19/eleanor-friedberger-new-view

"but just" was going to end with something about her working in LA

There is something sad about her position (though she makes great records). She's amazingly talented, and has real star potential, but the Fiery Furnaces just fucked it up. I've seen her last three shows in Glasgow - all great - but there were not much more than 50 people at any of them. She seems out of place, too big for the rooms, but that's where she is. I tell people that I've seen her and they haven't even heard of her.

Why do you blame the FFs? Just curious.

I wonder how her sales and show attendance compare to what the FFs were doing at their peak.

The article makes it seem as the age of streaming for free is the reason musicians are broke nowadays but I don’t really see her or the Fiery Furnaces even getting a chance in the pre-internet age.

Also they are a hard band to sell tbh and yet their weirdness was their selling point. I still love her but her solo career is very lowkey compared to what they did as a band. They were a very niche band and people still following her is even more niche.

I was a gonzo Furnaces fan -- never missed an L.A. show (including multiple nights of the same visit), obsessed over the albums, etc. Moments of those shows are burned in my memory. I still look back with a kind of awe that they even existed; they were such a singular band.

But even I have sort of lost track of Eleanor. Hoping to pick up the thread with this new one.

She opened for Luna at the Moroccan Lounge in LA, and said she'll be back as headliner in May. Nice venue to see her in.

Yes, Furnaces were a fantastic live band, always interesting with a wide range of energy/sounds. And for niche, they were filling pretty large rooms at their peak (First Ave's Main Room here, though not sold out).

Solo Eleanor is very reliable as well, though some friends have balked at solo sets, too low-key (not for me). Last time through, I didn't feel the band was up to her, but as the set went on, she managed to mess with them a bit and they rose to her game.

thanks, nick (didn't realize Luna were still out there!)

They re-grouped, may still be on that tour.

The article makes it seem as the age of streaming for free is the reason musicians are broke nowadays but I don’t really see her or the Fiery Furnaces even getting a chance in the pre-internet age.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, April 4, 2018 6:25 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dunno about FF but I think one of the things that has changed is that labels know they won't make money on physical releases, which means less money offered for advances, tour support, etc. I'd be willing to bet FF were doing better financially than Eleanor is now, despite the fact that her music is a lot more accessible

i wanted to see that Luna show with her opening up here in Los Angeles. was so temped to go but i already saw Beck/Spoon and going to MGMT, a couple of Giants/Angel games and trying to get to the Arctic Monkeys show too. my budget is stretched for entertainment at the moment. oh yeah, of Montreal and Modest Mouse are also possibilities.

Those of us here in L.A. should meet up at Amoeba, and wander around mumbling declaratory sentences to each other, or something...

haha, i'm in

morrisp, did you post under a different name before or are you brand new to ILM?

I used to post here ages ago (early 2000s), and recently returned (God knows why or how long I’ll last).

lol, this is a good place most of the time. i came on around 2006 or so, i think my first post had to do with Moose. anyways, 12 years now? i'm fucking old school now.

this place is so intimidating, it's hard to get new people.

i think it took me six months before my first post because of that. i used to post on the old CMJ board called Obner. glad i found a new home here on ILM way back when.

Well, nice to meet you! The vibe is pretty much as I remember it... maybe a little less intense and friendlier (though more “Polls”... so many Polls!)

haha, i have done:

ILM Ballot Polls for 2014 and beyond -- order, timing, "I would have voted if I'd known about it," etc

New Order
Steely Dan
The Boo Radleys
Spoon
Bauhaus
Oasis (lol)
Talking Heads
Joy Division

gave up on and took over by others:

Blondie
Smashing Pumpkins (currently going as you can see)

Damn. Just checked when she's playing next in London and it was last night at the (tiny) Moth Club: a venue I love.

Sucks to be a shit fan.

Hello morrisp!

Hahaha I think i ended up in this hellhole 10 years ago because my mp3blog was being roasted in here and I got curious. Posters were not nice then and they still are not but for better or worse it still is the best forum I’ve bumped into to discuss music.

Also site mods/analysts can doublecheck this fact but I’m fairly sure polls were abused 10 years ago between 2007/2008. I swear back then 7 out of 10 daily active threads were polls.

I also did like 20 polls those years, sorry.

For much of that time, she was in a relationship with Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand
^^now that's a power couple!

Liked this detail:

“When I stand onstage I think I’m Neil Young. Like, ‘That’s how I do it’; that’s what’s going through my head. I mean he doesn’t play a Stratocaster like I play but it’s just something in the way that I hold myself; that’s what I’m emulating.”

she also dated Britt Daniel while a student at UT.

show was great! just her and a guitar, backing tracks on some songs

had a chance to talk to her after the show, she was very kind and we agreed that New View is v underrated

that sounds like a great night, wish i could have gone.

this place is so intimidating, it's hard to get new people.

― Bee OK, Wednesday, April 4, 2018 9:33 PM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm still intimidated outside of ILB.

lovely solo session. her voice sounds great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TllEbRUq1Ls

thx for posting this - the interview bits are fun, seems like she was in a good mood

(-- not to imply she's usually grouchy or something! just that she seems more engaged & open than artists tend to be in these performance + interview clips)

Hmm, things get "interesting" when the interviewer asks her about NYC

"Are We Good?" another standout track

i listen to this album all the time. i do love it. there is a comfort listening to her music that i get that i don't really get from a lot of other newer things today.