The Fiery Furnaces- Remember…
1/10

Not even Fiery Furnaces fans will like this collection of D-grade live recordings, supposedly put together to showcase the band’s live career between 2005 and 2007. The double-disc, 51 song collection is rubbish! So many of the tracks are of such poor quality that they distort and bleed from your speakers, sounding more like boot-legged cellphone recordings from die-hard fans than quality live recordings deliberately planned for a live album. It’s extremely disappointing, especially given the fact that the band’s most recent studio album Widow City was one of the best releases of 2007. That album displayed the band as a unique experimental force with a rare ability to fuse psychedelic folk with hard rock, shoegaze and bubblegum pop. These live recordings tear that experimentation to pieces, with instruments out of balance and microphones focused in all the wrong places. Classic Fiery Furnace tracks like ‘Blueberry Boat’ and ‘Two Fat Feet’ come of sounding like heavy rock songs, with the bass and drums vibrating through the recording, blowing a horrible distorted sound over top of everything. Elsewhere Elenor Friedberger’s vocals are turned way to loud, on ‘Asthma Attack’ her yelling makes you take a step back and far to often her vocals sound preachy and out of time. The odd track was apparently recorded live in a studio, however ‘My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found’ is probably the only track of any quality to perhaps have been recorded in the more professional environment. Hopefully it’s just the quality of these recordings that makes this album unmistakably bad, otherwise The Fiery Furnaces are a very shitty live band. If you manage to listen your way through this entire album you are a very brave person.
Nick

 

Posted by Nick Fulton under Album, Reviews