Rehearsing My Choir Review
There's a certain quote by Lucian Freud, doctored liberally by Michael Ondaatje, that applies to my life countless times: "Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross." I find that phrase constantly circling in my head. "Everything is biographical." Everything stems from the fact that, as Mon Oncle D'Amerique points out, we are simply a collection of views and opinions that are passed down remains of our ancestors. Even if we are against what our parents or grandparents did, it is a reaction to their choices.
Susan Howe, as a poet, uses her language to show that she is a collector. A collector of books, a collector of language, a collector of phrases. We are all hoarders, even if what we accumulate are the tattered remains of memories not often sung. And perhaps this is where my divergent track finally verges onto a road that is applicable to the album I am currently listening to. If there is any phrase in music that has circled in my head as much as, "Everything is biographical," it is, "Memories are better off sung."
I realize only too late that discussing my family's talents is no context for an album review, but I've never been one to believe that music must be listened to with an explanation. What I know is that I bring myself to a listening. I bring everything that I have ever experienced, seen, listened to, read to any event. I'm incapable of not creating my own context. And so I will tell you that my family can be recognized by a collection of gestures while they tell stories. Each family story is told with changing inflections. Their facial expressions change. They raise their hands and make fists. Because stories are better told as an act.
I have a difficult time writing about experiences in my life because I want them to be perfect. I want them to be written better than when they were experienced. At the time, I had no idea what feelings were moving in me. Time has allowed me to analyze what I must have been feeling, though it is no accurate account. When I read some of my personal journal entries about working in retail, it makes me smile to remember the silly things my co-workers said. The memories play better in my head with words to decorate them.
The same can be said of The Fiery Furnaces' Rehearsing My Choir, a collection of memories turned into songs which play as a conversation between Eleanor Friedberger and her grandmother, Olga Sarantos. This is an album with no liner notes, that insists to be listened to with no context. Matthew Friedberger would play with context later on Matricidal Sons of Bitches, providing a non-existent horror film for his soundtrack. What is provided on Rehearsing My Choir are images of Sarantos with her choir, insinuating that past history is at play.
I'm not one to go looking into the personal lives of the musicians I like. I don't believe that I'll learn anything new about their music through their lives. What I know about Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger is that their lives were filled with music. And so it seems only natural that they would imbue personal history into music. If you're new to Fiery Furnaces' work, then you wouldn't know that their music is constantly biographical. I find myself singing along to Chris Michaels constantly and not knowing who Kevin, Jenny, or Melinda are. But that's okay. That's not for me. What is for me are the mile-a-minute lyrics, which are more stories told than lyrics sung, and the melodic motifs. Solo releases infer that these story lyrics are perhaps those of Eleanor and the melodic motifs are perhaps Matthew's half.
If this is a review, then it's a prerequisite that I tell you whether this album is good or not. This is something I generally dislike doing; if I'm writing about it, then I am spending time on it and thus, probably like it quite a great deal. But it's important for me to discuss this on an album like Rehearsing My Choir, where reviewers are often split. You don't need context to know where I come from in music interest. In terms of their perpetual story-telling and their hummable melodies, I believe that Rehearsing My Choir is currently the best album that The Fiery Furnaces have to offer. Though let's be fair, I have yet to construct a list of their albums in most-liked order, due to the fact that I think they're all worthy of praise. Of course, it's entirely possible that my interests don't apply to your interests and that you will hate this album grotesquely. That's fine. I like it when music is just for me.
When I listen to The Fiery Furnaces, I truly have the feeling that this music has been composed. This is a difficult feeling to incite in one when most music follows one path and, if really experimental, maybe a change in tempo. A Fiery Furance's song will mostly likely consist of four songs. They surprise me. They excite me. The continual tempo changes on Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street were what first lured me to this album. I had been apprehensive initially, since so many other reviews expressed dislike. I learned never to trust the opinions of others. Especially with a song like Guns Under the Counter, which impressed me with the introduction of a guitar then followed by a synthetic melody that is still stuck in my head. Or the entire giddy second half of the song, which is about doughnuts, of all things, with "confectioner's sugar so sweet it was caustic, and chocolate so bitter that it could kill typhus, and glazing so shiny it could set back glaucoma, and filling so filling you didn't need stitches."
Clever word play and unconventional lyrics are part of what make me love The Fiery Furnaces, and part of what has spoiled me any time people talk about what constitutes for "good lyrics." How can we even consider contemporary artists who write about love when we could be listening to, "God bless my dear departed Peter, that he never had to meet her, his beautiful granddaughter who dyed - it would have killed him again - her gorgeous red-brown hair black." It's the kind of word play that is better listened to the first time than read.
So much of Rehearsing My Choir is conversational, ironically. However, because so much of the lyrics are spoken, it makes the sung portions stick out like a bolt of brightly patterned fabric next to pinstripe. This is where the melodies play an integral part in The Fiery Furnace's work. My heart lifts when I hear the music that plays along with, "I felt like I was dancing on air, but not very far off the ground," on Seven Silver Curses. Though it's the end of Seven Silver Curses that has my heart. Or that I am constantly compelled to sing along with Slavin' Away, the ultimate pay-off of the album coming in the motif that has played through the album gifted with lyrics.
When I listen to Rehearsing My Choir, it takes up the majority of my attention, as if I am sitting down and listening to their stories rather than songs. But the Friedbergers chose to cement their memories in music. And so I judge it on a personal level as well as a musical level. Their memories are better off sung. Emotions are imbued in the lyrics. Still raw, one can hear Sarantos' affected voice as she states, "I'd see them together at church and they'd look sort of grim. It didn't seem as though she was happy with him."
Having published their memories, what The Fiery Furnaces have to contend with is someone like me. Singing their memories out loud with no context. But I guess that's why memories are better off sung, written, expressed. They stick better that way.
"Listen to this tune I'm playing now, kids.
Does it seem sad?
Does it remind you of when?"
Susan Howe, as a poet, uses her language to show that she is a collector. A collector of books, a collector of language, a collector of phrases. We are all hoarders, even if what we accumulate are the tattered remains of memories not often sung. And perhaps this is where my divergent track finally verges onto a road that is applicable to the album I am currently listening to. If there is any phrase in music that has circled in my head as much as, "Everything is biographical," it is, "Memories are better off sung."
I realize only too late that discussing my family's talents is no context for an album review, but I've never been one to believe that music must be listened to with an explanation. What I know is that I bring myself to a listening. I bring everything that I have ever experienced, seen, listened to, read to any event. I'm incapable of not creating my own context. And so I will tell you that my family can be recognized by a collection of gestures while they tell stories. Each family story is told with changing inflections. Their facial expressions change. They raise their hands and make fists. Because stories are better told as an act.
I have a difficult time writing about experiences in my life because I want them to be perfect. I want them to be written better than when they were experienced. At the time, I had no idea what feelings were moving in me. Time has allowed me to analyze what I must have been feeling, though it is no accurate account. When I read some of my personal journal entries about working in retail, it makes me smile to remember the silly things my co-workers said. The memories play better in my head with words to decorate them.
The same can be said of The Fiery Furnaces' Rehearsing My Choir, a collection of memories turned into songs which play as a conversation between Eleanor Friedberger and her grandmother, Olga Sarantos. This is an album with no liner notes, that insists to be listened to with no context. Matthew Friedberger would play with context later on Matricidal Sons of Bitches, providing a non-existent horror film for his soundtrack. What is provided on Rehearsing My Choir are images of Sarantos with her choir, insinuating that past history is at play.
I'm not one to go looking into the personal lives of the musicians I like. I don't believe that I'll learn anything new about their music through their lives. What I know about Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger is that their lives were filled with music. And so it seems only natural that they would imbue personal history into music. If you're new to Fiery Furnaces' work, then you wouldn't know that their music is constantly biographical. I find myself singing along to Chris Michaels constantly and not knowing who Kevin, Jenny, or Melinda are. But that's okay. That's not for me. What is for me are the mile-a-minute lyrics, which are more stories told than lyrics sung, and the melodic motifs. Solo releases infer that these story lyrics are perhaps those of Eleanor and the melodic motifs are perhaps Matthew's half.
If this is a review, then it's a prerequisite that I tell you whether this album is good or not. This is something I generally dislike doing; if I'm writing about it, then I am spending time on it and thus, probably like it quite a great deal. But it's important for me to discuss this on an album like Rehearsing My Choir, where reviewers are often split. You don't need context to know where I come from in music interest. In terms of their perpetual story-telling and their hummable melodies, I believe that Rehearsing My Choir is currently the best album that The Fiery Furnaces have to offer. Though let's be fair, I have yet to construct a list of their albums in most-liked order, due to the fact that I think they're all worthy of praise. Of course, it's entirely possible that my interests don't apply to your interests and that you will hate this album grotesquely. That's fine. I like it when music is just for me.
When I listen to The Fiery Furnaces, I truly have the feeling that this music has been composed. This is a difficult feeling to incite in one when most music follows one path and, if really experimental, maybe a change in tempo. A Fiery Furance's song will mostly likely consist of four songs. They surprise me. They excite me. The continual tempo changes on Forty-Eight Twenty-Three Twenty-Second Street were what first lured me to this album. I had been apprehensive initially, since so many other reviews expressed dislike. I learned never to trust the opinions of others. Especially with a song like Guns Under the Counter, which impressed me with the introduction of a guitar then followed by a synthetic melody that is still stuck in my head. Or the entire giddy second half of the song, which is about doughnuts, of all things, with "confectioner's sugar so sweet it was caustic, and chocolate so bitter that it could kill typhus, and glazing so shiny it could set back glaucoma, and filling so filling you didn't need stitches."
Clever word play and unconventional lyrics are part of what make me love The Fiery Furnaces, and part of what has spoiled me any time people talk about what constitutes for "good lyrics." How can we even consider contemporary artists who write about love when we could be listening to, "God bless my dear departed Peter, that he never had to meet her, his beautiful granddaughter who dyed - it would have killed him again - her gorgeous red-brown hair black." It's the kind of word play that is better listened to the first time than read.
So much of Rehearsing My Choir is conversational, ironically. However, because so much of the lyrics are spoken, it makes the sung portions stick out like a bolt of brightly patterned fabric next to pinstripe. This is where the melodies play an integral part in The Fiery Furnace's work. My heart lifts when I hear the music that plays along with, "I felt like I was dancing on air, but not very far off the ground," on Seven Silver Curses. Though it's the end of Seven Silver Curses that has my heart. Or that I am constantly compelled to sing along with Slavin' Away, the ultimate pay-off of the album coming in the motif that has played through the album gifted with lyrics.
When I listen to Rehearsing My Choir, it takes up the majority of my attention, as if I am sitting down and listening to their stories rather than songs. But the Friedbergers chose to cement their memories in music. And so I judge it on a personal level as well as a musical level. Their memories are better off sung. Emotions are imbued in the lyrics. Still raw, one can hear Sarantos' affected voice as she states, "I'd see them together at church and they'd look sort of grim. It didn't seem as though she was happy with him."
Having published their memories, what The Fiery Furnaces have to contend with is someone like me. Singing their memories out loud with no context. But I guess that's why memories are better off sung, written, expressed. They stick better that way.
"Listen to this tune I'm playing now, kids.
Does it seem sad?
Does it remind you of when?"