The Fiery Furnaces
Issue #26
Rehearsing My Choir (Rough Trade)
By Jim Keller
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 12:31pm
Though their band name sounds like a ferocious rock outfit, in reality, it’s merely culled from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a musical film about a flying car. Sound strange? That’s nothing compared to what Eleanor and Matt Friedberger actually unleash. Rehearsing My Choir, the fourth release from Brooklyn’s Fiery Furnaces, cuts and pastes recollections of the Friedberger siblings’ 83-year-old grandmother, Olga Sarantos, in such a manner that by listening to the LP once, you can’t tell what’s going on.
A concept album at it’s core, Rehearsing My Choir features Sarantos narrating instances of her life while Eleanor Friedberger lends her voice to accent each tale. Though some tracks, like “The Wayward Granddaughter,” offer danceable beats, this album is likely to be lost on non-rock opera/spoken-word fans. Sarantos’s Kermit the Frog narration is hard to stomach as her inflection grows tiresome and seems to nag without pause. At times, you might come up for air, like on “Guns Under the Counter,” which acts as an absurd recount of donut filling once used to suture a bullet wound.
The only plus on Rehearsing My Choir is Matt Friedberger’s inclusion of a note, which acts as a map for the record by detailing what decades particular tracks take place in. This allows a listener, who has forged through the repetitive music and phrases of this album, to piece the story together if she wishes. However, this desire is unlikely, which begs another point: if it doesn’t form a cohesive story, what’s the point of the record?
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