Eleanor Friedberger (of the Fiery Furnaces)

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.

listening to this now.

honestly i kinda wanted to like the fiery furnaces but everything i heard drove me nuts.

anyway, this album is really knocking me out! such good songs but there's a certain subtle eccentricity about it.

the vocal phrasing on "roosevelt island" really reminds me of something

i interviewed her a few years ago (2005?) and asked her about her phrasing--i think she said her fave singers were bob dylan and joe strummer.

the vocal phrasing on "roosevelt island" really reminds me of something

of how she really is...?

I love this.

the vocal phrasing on "roosevelt island" really reminds me of something

dan bejar?

This album is such a little gem.

I love this album! I filmed one of her songs with my crummy old camera at the Rough Trade West shop a few weeks ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPjHXO4GWOI

I liked her more than I expected to when I saw her opening for Wild Flag. A couple people express extreme hate for her over on that thread. Her retro sensibilities and phrasing can be an acquired taste

what about her boring songs and indie voice?

I'll bite. I can't help you with the "indie voice," whatever that is - but she's writing really interesting lyrics; she nails what Tom Waits called "putting a zip code" on her songs; they're packed full of really evocative details (lyrically and musically, I think). I mean, it seems pretty clear that the Fiery Furnaces really rub some people the wrong way, but Jesus - they/she can't be accused of doing anything really all that run of the mill.

I think it means her voice isn't supported by any major label money.

I wanted to love this album because a friend whose opinions and mine coincide more often than not, but after seven or eight listens the melodies sounded undistinguished. Nothing really stood out.

i haven't listened to this album too much, but when i do i like it quite a bit! moreso than the fiery furnaces stuff i've heard.

tylerw otm, I've tried and tried with Fiery Furnaces but was never able to really understand why so many people adored them. This album, otoh, is wonderful. And I think Alfred is offtm wrt to "undistinguished melodies", there are great ones all over this thing!

This is one of my favorite albums of the year.

^

yall seriously pretending not to know what i mean by indie voice?

love, love this album but it's no Fiery Furnaces

yall seriously pretending not to know what i mean by indie voice?

In the most sinister place in my heart, of course I do. I'm not sure it works here because Friedberger projects so much damn warmth. However, her voice doesn't enliven these songs, most of which just sit there. The only one I can recall unprompted is "I Won't Fall Apart On You Tonight," one of the more generic ones.

Inn Of The Seventh Ray is one of the best songs of this year.

yall seriously pretending not to know what i mean by indie voice?

Genuinely don't know. I mean, I assumed you meant a kind of "affectedly disaffected" thing or something, but that objectively doesn't apply to this album.

http://cdn4.pitchfork.com/news/49793/92c6f0ea.jpg

Personal Record is the second solo album released by Eleanor Friedberger, most notably for being vocalist in the band The Fiery Furnaces with her brother Matthew Friedberger. The album will be released on 4 June 2013 on the Merge Records record label.

1 I Don't Want to Bother You
2 When I Knew
3 I'll Never Be Happy Again
4 Stare at the Sun
5 Echo or Encore
6 My Own World
7 Tomorrow Tomorrow
8 You'll Never Know Me
9 I Am the Past
10 She's a Mirror
11 Other Boys
12 Singing Time

Does Merge say if she sings this one in an indie voice? J/k
I like the cover. She's got a new 7" out with track 3 on the A side and a Jimmie Dale Gilmore cover on the b-side

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.