After The Fiery Furnaces left the stage on Veteran’s Day, I couldn’t help but think that their live show wasn’t what I had imagined going in, only slightly familiar with their catalog. With their latest studio work that featured a rollicking keyboard laden, post modern soundscape to allow singer Eleanor Friedberger to be the group’s centerpiece, I assumed there be someone behind the ivories at some point. However, as The Fiery Furnaces took the stage at The Magic Bag on November 11th, their set up was noticeably stripped down. Not to say this is a bad thing.
The duo of siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, were joined by bassist Jason Lowenstein and drummer Bob D’Amico. Signature keyboard lines were taken by Matthew on guitar, who was armed with merely one effect pedal to add select noise to his vintage telecaster. Eleanor’s voice which laid so heavily over the layers of sound on the last record I’m Going Away, was occasionally lost in the energy of the power trio thrashing away behind her.
With a clear cut effort to replace the studio keyboard work with just guitar the choice made for some unique and different interpretations. The opening “Rub-Alcohol Blues” replaced the calming, smooth keyboard backing with prickly guitar pings from Matthew. On other songs Matthew’s guitar added some extra speed as he punched out riffs on songs like “Keep Me In The Dark,” which was given a shot of energy. The trio of instruments stripped the songs down to their bare bones, and on occasion it caused a few of them to blend together, sounding very similar. D’Amico and Lowenstein create a throttling rhythm section for Matthew to accent. The short set was complete with an encore featuring a few crowd requests as Eleanor sheepishly said, “We’ve got a lot of songs under our belt, so hopefully we can make someone happy…” as a fan screamed for “Japanese Slippers.”
Overall the show, despite being a hair over an hour including the encore, was above all entertaining. To see the two siblings rework their songs created some endearing and unique moments, while it proved that the group is set on mixing older and newer material into an amalgamation of the most basic sounds of the band that have endured through their entire catalog.
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