The Fiery Furnaces: “This record has many, many different 'anticipatory plagiarisms'”

It’s an historic weekend in the US Senate. The majority leader, Democrat Harry Reid from Nevada, garnered exactly the 60 votes he needed to get an official government debate on landmark health care reform legislation in motion, one of the most viciously and idiotically contested priorities of Barack Obama’s presidential agenda.

Healthcare for all Americans irrespective of their financial status is still a long way off – it’s only the move to debate, not to officially pass the bill that the vote heralded – but it’s news that’s sure to give Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger cause for mild fraternal jubilation, seeing as how they turned a number of their shows into health care reform rallies aimed at motivating the oft too nonchalant youth vote, and urged websites and fans to CALL THEIR SENATORS! But it’s all too easy to assume that fans of the Fiery Furnaces absurd and unconventional yield are kindly minded, liberal folk with a nose for progression in politics as developed as for avant-garde music.

“Preaching to the choir,” is how Matt puts the response to the shows. “But preaching to the choir is never much what’s needed now. Galvanizing. The audience to this sort of music is overwhelmingly part of the cultural left, but their involvement in mainstream American politics is…minimal. The humiliation of the Bush administration has not had the effect it might have, it seems. very disappointed that the music websites have not done their part in this regard. They have absolutely nothing to lose. Pitchfork in particular. They really could have an impact. But, no. Very disappointing. The atmosphere around this issue is truly incredible, truly shocking. Well, I suppose I am not shocked…”

Reid’s success in winning the vote prevented the Republicans from being able to filibuster the debate, to string it out with endless soapboxing against the subject to stop it from ever reaching cloture. Its political connotations aside, filibustering seems like an apt metaphor for the Fiery Furnaces’ inimitable approach to music, and more recently, polemic given Matt’s lengthy and increasingly obscure ripostes to their “feud” with Radiohead, and now Beck. The former didn’t respond; the latter wrote one of his best songs of the past ten years in response. But to the music. They’ve just released a self-covers album, Take Me Round Again, where Matt and Eleanor take six songs each from the original record, I’m Going Away, released in August this year to wide acclaim. It’s by far their most accessible record to date – “so plain and soft and casual,” according to Matt, in response to the “complicated and aggressive and organised” Remember, a double live CD that even the band admitted was not designed to be listened to in one go. Mostly written by Eleanor, I’m Going Away was the sound of retrospectively modern downtown ragtime, all rambunctious dancing and an array of seedy characters like ‘Ray Bouvier’ and ‘Charmaine Champagne’ who seemed to lead her character astray.

“I asked her about this, and she said, ‘What the fuck sort of world does she think I live in?’ She was smiling when she said it. That’s her world, she says. Very bar-centred. It’s all true, she says.”

If I’m Going Away is the smoky night before, Take Me Round Again to a certain extent feels like the Friedbergers are still in the pub at 11am the next morning slightly the worse for wear, with a loose hold on where the piano keys are and the stale tang of whiskey in the air – it’s very much a fan artefact only, a quixotic and explorative recording reminiscent of the ethos of their live show, where simple songs become drawn out medleys, tempos stop and start like a pogo stick on an accelerator and nothing is simple.

“I don’t have any set way to change, or derange, the songs for playing live. I think first about the opposite direction, though. Always the opposite direction. The slow song should be fast, and so forth. But as you might imagine, sometimes I ‘opposite’ myself back to where I started. I try to do the opposite of the opposite – which sometimes, though only sometimes, turns out to be the ‘same’.”

Baffled yet? We’re still on training ground when it comes to how oddball the ‘Furnaces can possibly get. Next spring, they’re set to release a silent record in book form, for fans to interpret their own versions of the song. “Since bands can no longer sell audio, FF decline to provide it,” they announced, in a similar approach to Deerhoof’s free release of the sheet music of ‘Fresh Born’ last summer. “I’m inspired by everything Deerhoof does,” says Matt, “but in this case – well, this ‘record’ has many, many different ‘anticipatory plagiarisms’!”

There’s a while yet to brush up on your sightreading skills (though knowing these guys, who’s to say that they’ll order their compositions with a staff and clef), and in between, the re-release of Matt’s solo album, Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School to contend with, a double record dedicated to Eleanor. Whether the once mooted rock opera will ever come to fruition is yet to be seen (Matt brought up their admiration for the genre again in the Radiohead debacle, stating (perhaps tongue in cheek) that “lots of The Fiery Furnaces work is dedicated to imitating The Who’s ‘Tommy’), but the band’s virile relationship with productivity brings to mind Lester Bangs’ article on the Count Five, a ‘60s garage band from California whose one single, ‘Psychotic Reaction’ was canonised in an article for Creem magazine that saw Bangs so possessed by his gusto for the song that he invented a back catalogue of waxing and waning quality for them. “I’m given to fabrication of albums sometimes, like if I wish a certain album existed and it doesn’t I just make it up,” he said. Have the Friedbergers had to admit defeat on many projects?

“Defeat? Never. Projects never die, they just wait.”