The Fiery Furnaces: Rehearsing My Choir : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Call it attention-benefit disorder on the geriatric tip: Delightfully daft bro-and-sis act Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger bring their Greek grandmother Olga Sarantos aboard to sing an hour's worth of interwoven narratives about priests who can't stay in tune and a pastry shop with "chocolate so bitter it could cure typhus." As ever, the Fiery Furnaces' music happily thumbs its nose at genre boundaries and traditional song structure. Matthew's manic lyrics -- which evoke a cage match between Ian Whitcomb and Nelson Algren -- combine with techno pulses and squirrelly spinet lines on "The Wayward Granddaughter," a love story involving two Kevins who attend a Chicago basketball camp for "underprivileged kids and overstimulated brats." It doesn't always sound nice when Eleanor and Olga trade vocals, but there's an odd family magic that comes to the fore. Yes, these prose-stuffed metasongs require concentrated listening. But the rewards are rich, the experience unique.