Review: Fiery Furnaces @ The Magic Bag
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 featuring rollicking keyboard-laden, post-modern soundscapes that allow singer Eleanor Friedberger to be the group’s centerpiece, I assumed there would 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,
The choice to replace studio keyboard work with guitar 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 created 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.”
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