Really, I’m not quite sure why I do this to myself. Only a few weeks ago I was reviewing Oneida’s latest album; a triple album that spanned well over an hour in length, if you recall. Then, for some reason, the urge takes me to ask if I can review the re-issue of Fiery Furnaces frontman Matthew Friedberger’s 2006 double album, Winter Woman / Holy Ghost Language School. Another artist who hardly shies away from the challenging, mentally-confrontational side of pop music, another pair of CD’s, each one of which breaks the 70-minute mark. For someone with such a tiny attention span, I really pick my records badly.Luckily for me, this isn’t entirely intended as a coherent double album. In fact, it’s not really intended as a coherent anything, the two albums seemingly packaged together for ease and very little else. Friedberger himself described the release as “an act of mercy” because Eleanor, his sister and co-Fiery Furnace, lead vocalist of that band, “wouldn’t have to sing all this crap.” It seems a curious idea to release this at all, in such a hurried manner on a small-time (and now defunct) record label, stranger still to re-issue it three years on with only a handful of bonus tracks to offer any incentive to fans who, presumably, already own the original release.Despite the confusion over why, the what is, happily, a pair of really quite decent albums. Winter Woman especially captures Friedberger at his creative best, harking back to the sound of his band’s debut - and for my money, still their best - Gallowsbird’s Bark. It’s really quite remarkable how many great hooks this man can get out of that same synth sound. Yeah, you know the one. As is predictable, it’s overly long, and more or less unmanageable in one sitting, but there are probably two good-length albums residing on this disc alone, both of them better than anything the Furnaces actually released between Blueberry Boat and this year’s return to form, I’m Going Away. It’s strengths are underpinned by a Beach Boys-influenced pop sensibility, with Friedberger largely saving his journeys into the insane for this release’s other disc.Holy Ghost Language School is more problematic, being at once more experimental and, apparently, a concept album, though I still can’t work out what that concept is. It’s far from a rotten album, but despite being a concept album, it lacks any sort of unification, sounding even more like an arbitrary collection of tracks than Winter Woman. It’s probably interesting for fans, perhaps revealing something of the processes going on behind perplexing albums from this era like Rehearsing My Choir and Bitter Tea, but ultimately there’s not much worth going back for.So I’m still unclear on the reasons for doing it this way. There are at least two solid Fiery Furnace albums amongst this collection, and given the Friedberger’s complete lack of quality control at times in the past, it seems bizarre that some of their most solid stuff for years is only now seeing a major release, and even then a low-key one. Fans of the band will know, however, that they could do a lot worse than check out Winter Woman, which on it’s own makes this set worth having.

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