Fiery Furnaces

I don't know what to expect - there's been some very positive press about the band lately, and they had very nice blurbs in both the Voice and the Onion this week, so I'm nervous that there will be a lot of people turning up for this gig.

...not until the next time.

I *need* a copy of this or any of their other shows. I'm hungry for FF bootlegs now, especially since it's so different live.

Nate, give them another chance! They are their own thing, not much like the Stripes at all.

Oh man, I hope that I didn't miss "Inca Rag/Name Game." That would break my heart!

White Stripes? White Stripes wish they could be as original and just plain fucking cool as FF. No contest bro.

Considering the source, now I'm back to the ambivalence I had before Perpetua nearly convinced me. Thanks a load.

I saw both the White Stripes and the Fiery Furnaces this week, and I just don't think they are as similar as some people make them out to be. There's some similar influences (the Stripes are heavy into blues and 70s riff rock, the Furnaces touch on the blues and 70s riff rock here and there, but not quite as literally as the Stripes), but the approach of the bands are very different. I think the two bands compliment each other very well, I don't think they need to exist in opposition to each other at all. The two bands just feel very different.

also what'd people think of franz ferdinand? i thought they were kinda boring!

I Love Lucy seemed like they had some potential to be a good pop band. I talked to the drummer for a bit, and he was telling me that they weren't signed yet. Somebody really ought to snap them up.

Man, I wish I knew what you folks looked like. I was all alone the whole night cos my friends had to bail due to a) illness b) the hassle of the L train not working after midnight c) birthday parties.

I bet the Fiery Furnaces were nervous, Geeta. Eleanor seemed a little uneasy, and I get the feeling that they aren't comfortable with their new drummer and keyboard player. At one point Matt yelled at the other guy for starting a song with the wrong chord, and then on the last song, Eleanor had to step over to block the guy's hand so that he'd stop playing for a moment to make one part of the song more dynamic. Maybe they will fire him too.

So, Franz Ferdinand--a little too grim for me, for the most part. I liked the the more dancey songs, they were alright. I loved the pint-sized powerhouse on stage left. He looked like he could have been in the Dave Clark Five. And the drummer was cute. Did you see the band before that? They were the weirdest twee pop band I've seen in ages. The singer had this mincing Jeremy Piven thing going on, it was quite captivating after awhile.

The songs weren't half bad for twee pop. There was one song in the middle which I'd really love to get a recording of - I think it was called "I Want A Girl" or something like that.

If you use Soulseek, I have all of my FF rarities shared, including the b-sides to the Crystal Clear single. I'm "perpetua" there.

The new version is sooooo great!

UGH IT'S AWFUL WHY DID THEY DO THAT??

OK!!

here's what I said:

fiery furnaces were great, btw. they played 'coffee + TV' and 'baby elephant walk' and everything.
-- RJG (r_gillander...), February 22nd, 2004 1:39 AM. (RJG) (later)

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and the girl is hawt.
-- RJG (r_gillander...), February 22nd, 2004 1:40 AM. (RJG) (later)

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and the guy looks like a cross between my flatmate's boyf and a friend of mine's boyf.
-- RJG (r_gillander...), February 22nd, 2004 1:40 AM. (RJG) (later)

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I write better tunes, though.
-- RJG (r_gillander...), February 22nd, 2004 1:40 AM. (RJG) (later)

the guy looks like xander

He looks better than that photo suggests, and she looks worse.

They're ugly!

There's another, enormous, picture here.

I remember who she reminded me of. emily perkins! the little sister from 'ginger snaps'. I love that movie. more now.

To downplay or ignore this frame, to claim that it's all about the music, man, is one/my definition of rockism. (the fact that Basement Jaxists on ILM are so exclusively, post-Reynoldsianly, focused on the 'text' is one reason I think of them as slightly rockist [or at least nerdy] themselves.)

i'm not arguing that. it's of supreme importance. but i just find it depressing that where women in bands are concerned, the level of discussion sinks to "oog, she's purty!" or "ick, i'd never touch that!" very quickly. how exactly does this help me engage with the world of the fiery furnaces?

I just resent that the discussion here has shifted from talking about the records to deciding whether or not the band is worthwhile based on how the FEMALE singer looks. That's pretty sad.

they were exceptional. the looks she was giving us!

then discuss it complicated terms.

some of these comments remind me of people saying "hey Blondie is a BAND - just ignore that incredible film noir femme fatale singing the songs!"

blondie specifically set themselves up ("blondie is a group" campaign notwithstanding) with debbie harry as a focus of attraction. i don't think that one can argue that because a band has a female singer, they need to follow this model.

I hate the implication that someone shouldn't be a performer because they don't look right. That's what it comes down to, when I read certain comments. It just translates to me as "if she isn't hot, she should get off the stage." Or, "she's so hot, she's such a great performer because of that."

to me, judging eleanor on her attractiveness is routinizing (if that's a word).

I don't understand folks who go to see bands live without knowing their records, unless they are an opening act. I'm not saying that's totally wrong or bad; I just don't get the logic of it on a personal level. I'd rather really know the songs and then watch them be translated to stage than watch performers and hope that translates to record. The latter seems less reasonable.

Hey Lauren we are discussing it in complicated terms here! And Matthew I don't think anyone was saying they should get off the stage!

I think this conversation is interestingly precisely in the ways that performance enriches and complicates our pleasures in pop. This cuts both ways - I love the fact that the Pixies looked like some kind of Lynchian ID Parade of misfits, it somehow enhanced the music that they didn't look like, say, The Strokes.

I think what people - well RJG initially - were responding to on this thread was less 'pin-up good looks' or not, but a charisma, a quality of performance. And people who had only seen pictures were doubting this.

It seems slightly censorious to suggest that if people have seen a band they shouldnt talk about the performers, just as it would be to suggest people seeing a film should abstain from talking about the weird presence or charisma of the actors.

(BTW: 'routinization of charisma' is a phrase from Max Weber)

Live show is something to do on a Saturday night, when I'd be out spending money anyway. Buying a record is a completely different thing to me (plus, unless you're talking about singles, it is a lot cheaper anyway unless you're seeing some big name act).

the loss of enchantment!

I think there's just a different subtext to the "she's ULGY! like a mom UGLY! Ick!" comments, and that has nothing to do with the performance or the music.

In any case, this is a tempest in a teapot. None of the "hot or not" posts even mentioned how looks have bearing on music until the tempest started. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

This is actually a perfectly sensible, consistent position. If overall value = music + image. Looks can add to music but they can't take away, because hey, they're not music.
Not that I actually see things that way. It's all an interaction, for me.

Of course all of it is moot, as the environment surrounding our listening experience is vital to it. John Cage showed this before most of us were born, why bother trying to refute it?

8/10 for music
8/10 for image

your overall opinion : 16/20

Band B:

8/10 for music
0/10 for looks

your overall opinion : 8/20

In Band A, great looks have added bonus points. In Band B, they look awful, but you still have the 8 points for music.

Sure, you can formulate a system in which minus points are awarded, their looks affecting your enjoyment adversely, such that it would be better if you'd never seen them at all. But what I was suggesting is that Matthew doesn't use that system, and that's fine and not inconsistent.

(Fwiw, as a Brit who's lived in the States at various points, I do find in US indie circles a certain distrust of image, or fabulation in the bands they like. I think this is partly because in the states indie culture exists in a space of its own much more - on college radio etc. In the UK I think we are all basically Pop Kids - even those of us who have complete collections of the Sarah back catalogue. The way UK indie discos will play, eg Justin Timberlake would be kind of anathema in the states I think.)

I think this is very easy to do whether you know what the performers look like or not. I was thinking of this exact Eno quote while listening to TV On The Radio the other day, and I know what they look like.

it's really weird when you're like interested in one member of such a combo and the other member is present, very 'the dreamers' except it isn't a bad movie

this isn't a result of the singer's hawtness but she's still hawt.

I hadn't heard them, before last night, but, yeah, £6+down the hill+pals are going+recommendation=I will go and see them. I have downloaded a few songs and confirmed my slight concerns regarding live Vs. recorded sound. I will still buy the record, though. tomorrow, perhaps.

don't say I can't say she's hawt, again, please.

I think that maybe you loved the gig because you love each other.

Probably the FFs are mediocre. (I have barely or not heard them.)

It is always nice to see JtN talking about indie culture etc, but let me remind him that I hate Justin Timberlake. If I were in an indie or other club and his music came on, I would go up to JtN or someone else nearby and say: I hate this fucking bastard - people like him have ruined my life - and so on.

Actually JT is a good case for the looks / music thing.

I hate his 'music'.

I hate the way he looks.

I hate him.

re. the big questions that everyone is talking about, I am not sure where I stand.

N. would be a less compelling musician if he looked worse. But even as it is, I fear that he is not a very compelling musician. Possibly I am wrong and he has improved.

I would like to hear you sing.

If it were true about you being a compelling singer, then I suppose your combined ratings out of 10 would be off the scale.

Well, no - they would be 17/20 or something.

Why are people no longer capable of using three dots for an ellipsis? Even the front page of the Daily Mirror, etc, does it.

Two dots is far too close to one dot.

One dot is a full stop.

my interest in timberlake turned into patience with and has, recently, become boredom because of.

if in the middle of a sentence like so . . . see?

just playin with ya fluxdude!

strangely, after them not sounding as good, on my computer, as they did, live, now they don't sound as good, on my stereo, as they did, on my computer.

that is: after not sounding as good as they did, now they don't sound as good as they did.

I still like them a lot, though.

I often wish it wasn't so necessary, or so difficult, it's much more natural for me to write about it in the context of life or just general experience. I suppose it's an identity through sound thing with Basement Jaxx, particularly now they seem to have become their own genre.

RJG can I scab a copy of the album?

I will let you see the cover, sometime, though.

I like eleanor on that mp3 you posted to your blog matt.

commas excised from first draft of this post: 3.

N. developed a mathematical system, on it!

It was really frustrating how despite reading it a lot, I missed the big controversy when it happened.

It was nice when N. OK'd my reaction to his picture of the band, though. I enjoyed that.

Looking at it now, I wonder who it was who 'set' JtN 'straight' in the, the, 'boozer'? Or even, what boozer it was?

how could anyone but the corniest indie fuxors pretend that jumbled indulgent BB shite (except for the title track..i thought that was "neat") is in any way greater than GB??

Major Misunderstanding is a character in the British adult comic Viz. He is a retired major who dresses smartly, has a bushy walrus moustache and wears his medals on his chest for all to see; things which suggest that he is very pompous.

i just read about this. it's....bizarre

Like most creative musicians, Matt Friedberger is not a fan of Radiohead and most of their chart busters. Of course, Matt and all the Fiery Furnaces family are great fans of all Tommys living or dead, so much so that lots of the Fiery Furnaces' work is, because of the pun, dedicated to imitating the Who's Tommy.

"Back in the fall of 1996 or whenever that interview was conducted, the interviewer asked what Matt thought of the Radiohead song celebrating a WWI veteran. Matt naturally thought it would be interesting to pretend that they wrote a song about the celebrated American composer of a similar sounding name, hence his joking in the interview about Radiohead composing a song with something like 48 notes to an octave. It was easy and amusing to imagine Radiohead's attempt to colonize that relatively arcane bit of our musical lifeworld. This is what they used to call, in some bohemian and advertising circles, 'riffing' or fooling around.

"Matt has not heard the Radiohead song about Harry Patch, but if he did, he is sure he wouldn't like it. No doubt Radiohead and their fans can ignore his opinion of this matter and continue with their triumphant artistic interventions. Matt would have much preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists.

This guy sounds . . . disturbed.

This is hilarious. Matt Friedberger seems like he is probably not a very nice person IRL. I still need to listen to "I'm Going Away". "Widow City" is one of my favorite of their albums.

What a fun band.

They were.

Was just over to their Wiki page, almost teared up a little.

Blueberry Boat ages brilliantly, one of the best albums of the 00's beyond doubt imo

oh my fucking god this thread though

EP came out 10 years ago this Sunday. ;_;

Holy christ that makes me feel old.

Love several, but Rehearsing My Choir is rock of ages, in more ways than one. Granny Olga in Heaven, you rule!

how could anyone but the corniest indie fuxors pretend that jumbled indulgent BB shite (except for the title track..i thought that was "neat") is in any way greater than GB??

whatever dude

no kidding

they're both great records! they're just really really different.

They are the most fun indie band from the 00s imho. Maybe of all time.

well obviously

i have trouble perceiving these guys as 'fun'. bit of a mess, but fun?

Wacky glasses fun.

An excitable dog with a bowel problem fun

you both suck

i was thinking about signing up to do this artist poll. not sure if there would be enough interest?

I'd vote in it, do it

that's the problem. you and i and maybe a couple more. i think if i wanted to go down this type of path i would rather do of Montreal instead, as my love is much stronger.

why i chose to add Suede instead of Super Furry Animals. similar circumstances/adding the ILM element.

/

even when i do things on purpose, i still fuck it up.

Maybe a mixed genre poll? Don't know how to call it yho... Quirky, slightly Psychedelic pop from the 00s onwards? I don't know how to classify it. Of Montreal, Flaming Lips and Fiery Furnaces seem compatible.

great idea, can't wait until you do it :-)

Amen, self
Love several, but Rehearsing My Choir is rock of ages, in more ways than one. Granny Olga in Heaven, you rule!

― dow, Friday, January 9, 2015 9:11 AM

Olga really delivers her stories, with editing and rocking settings by Matthew.

Since “ranking” is all the rage ’round here:

1. Widow City (Side 2)
2. Rehearsing My Choir
3. I’m Going Away
4. Bitter Tea (Side 1)
5. Blueberry Boat
6. Gallowsbird’s Bark
7. Widow City (Side 1)
8. EP
9. Bitter Tea (Side 2)

Not counted: Take Me Round Again; Remember [but it’s great!]

(Also, having now bothered to look up how the vinyl actually breaks down — please sub “LP1” / “LP2,” or just “First Half” / “Second Half,” for “Side 1” / “Side 2” in both cases.)

Also, to give you an idea of the grading curve here — I’d rate “Gallowsbird’s Bark” an 8/10

haha, I like that

EP is good

Is I'm Going Away that good? I was too scared to ever hear it. Blueberry Boat is still my favourite album of this millennium

Happy to see Rehearsing My Choir get its rightful due. Blueberry Boat has become one of my fave records, period.

I've been listening to I'm Going Away. It's...alright. Even In The Rain (where I'm up to) is lovely. I can't remotely see how anyone could prefer it to any of the previous four albums (and EP) but it isn't bad music.

Lost At Sea is good too

Yeah, the album ends strong I guess but it's not quite there for me. Still! Hell of a run they had

I’m Going Away is a great album, with some of their best playing (and it’s the one I’ll still throw on the most often)

Stylistically, it revisits the tight, bluesy rock of Gallowsbird and the “empty musical theatre rehearsal room” aesthetic of (some of) Blueberry Boat... making for a nice closure.

(Also — the sarcastic guitar solo in “Even in the Rain” always makes me laugh, and is a perfect expression of Matt’s “personality”; for better or worse.)

Gawker style:

1. Widow City
2. Blueberry Boat
3. Gallowsbird's Bark
4. EP
5. I'm Going Away
6. getting hit by a bus
7. Rehearsing My Choir
8. Bitter Tea

That must be some bus, lol

Poor lovely Bitter Tea

Don't sleep on the Mr Fried Burger album fyi, fans of TFF's weirder stuff

Here https://mfriedberger.bandcamp.com/releases

It's second to BB in my ranking tbh

Bitter Tea sounded terrific at the time, and still does. The only “problem” is some of the songwriting in the 2nd half...

(and that damn whistle)

(The 2nd half does have "Police Sweater Blood Vow," tho -- one of their best)

First Rehearsing My Choir show from 2005 at the 40 Watt in Athens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-2etKWgW20

and also the first FF Show with Jason on bass and Bob on drums

!

Something interesting to me about this band (if I may pontificate) is how they always seemed to be bubbling just under the surface of “mainstream” success, even by the standards of 2000s indie rock. They were on a string of cool but slightly odd labels (instead of the Matador/Merge/Sub Pop axis)... I don’t think they ever performed on TV, in the U.S. at least (though please send me a YouTube link ASAP if I’m wrong!), in a era when bands at their level were regularly appearing on late-night shows (though maybe not as commonly as today; e.g., look at someone like Parquet Courts).

The Furnaces did press and got some attention (and toured a lot, of course); but it felt like somehow they were always just below the threshold of “top-flight” indie rock notice, in a time of Animal Collectives, Arcade Fires, and Wolf Parades. I don’t think they played many festivals, maybe that hurt them?

Of course, some people may feel they got just the right amount of attention (or even too much!) — but for me, they were the band of the decade, and I was always wishing they had a little more exposure.

I guess I would put them at the level of someone like Unrest in the ‘90s.

I did my part to raise awareness, btw. These are two examples of T-shirts I owned and wore until they became unwearable:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6e/f6/d9/6ef6d9e51bbaca6b63723878763e1555--t-shirt-tee.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d9/43/67/d94367597d3788d5f3722b9e5f3f6282--navy-t-shirts-candelabra.jpg

chris dahlen at pitchfork was basically their link to the outside world. at least they had one

i mean i also recall them getting features in uk newspapers and what have you but most publications saw them as an amusing curio to distract us in between arcade fire albums

and let's see who's still remembered in fifty years eh

I will concede their albums could be pretty weird, and required a deeper initial engagement than just “hey this sounds cool”.

and not helped by the fact that live, they likely alienated many of the 'casual' fans by not sticking to the 'script' of their records.

Yes, for sure (which was something I loved!)

Something I just now realized is that I've listened to the Furnaces 30-40x more over the years than Beefheart or Soft Machine.

Just came across this nice (duo) performance, from the waning days of their run:

https://www.amoeba.com/live-shows/detail-2423

(I think they played at Largo that visit to L.A.; it’s the only time I missed them...)

oh word? pic.twitter.com/gtGyxLhJqI

— Davin Kolderup (@dkolderup) February 18, 2020

They have a new (or newly active) Instagram acct, too...

The Dallas Morning News article at this post has a great Matt F. quote:

“If there was a pit orchestra at Chuck E. Cheese, that’s what we’d like to sound like.”

@pitchfork @pitchforkfest #p4k pic.twitter.com/Fp328dVytf

— The Fiery Furnaces (@Fiery_Furnaces) February 19, 2020

Let's hope this is more than just a live reunion!

They never broke up! They’ve just been, uh, on a long hiatus...

It’s very “on brand” that the Furnaces aren’t among the headliners at a major indie-rock festival — a “hometown” show, and their first performance anywhere in a decade (they’re not even 2nd-billed on the day they’re playing!).

Pitchfork also didn’t write a separate article about it, or mention the band in the first paragraph of their festival announcement.

i'm more irked by The National getting billing over Big Thief on Sunday (and I like the National!)

yeah, that’s also wack... who has more heat in Pitchfork World right now than Big Thief??

All-new album, or maybe just a best-of thing? (Given the title and that it’s on Third Man, my money is on the latter):

@Fiery_Furnaces x @thirdmanrecords 👀 pic.twitter.com/FuOLTsufNV

— Eleanor Friedberger (@EleanorOnly) June 14, 2020

(afraid it'll be a $$$ collectible 4-LP–plus–tchotchkes box set, with a locked-groove "Clear Signal From Cairo.")

I hope it's new stuff. Eleanor's time in the solo trenches would add a fascinating wrinkle

IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR
IT'S A CLEAR

My original impression of FFs was that they looked like the Carpenters, whose method was cool x cool, but FFs built toward effective contrast: she's cool, never minding the weird shit he's slinging all around her---an extension of, say, Les Paul and Mary Ford. But then Bitter Tea was more like the Carpenters living to fill out more of their forever autumnal penumbrae: she, now slightly husky-voiced, still thin, but still here. wearing her usual cardigan, standing at the window and sipping her bitter tea, looking out over the bay---kind of an Edward Hopper scene, though of course less melodramatic.
Widow City more of an Indie Rock return and advance, don't remember others, except Rehearsing My Choir was already one of my all-time favorite and most effecting and effective wild cars and cards ever.

They should get Jack White to play their grandmother and redo Rehearsing My Choir in the Third Man straight-to-lacquer-or-whatever-the-hell phone booth

I happen to be listening to RMC right now (in midst of a chronological revisit of their catalog).

Hi! We’re excited to share something new with you this week. pic.twitter.com/AQzb68i0fF

— The Fiery Furnaces (@Fiery_Furnaces) June 15, 2020

^^^CRAIG D SO OTM^^^ Either Jack or Neil, who made his own phonebooth album there.

"Don't remember others" after Widow City, that is.

omg, just stumbled across this collegetown show preview I wrote in 2010---is this true about I'm Going Away? Don't remember that one at all, well maybe a little, reading this:
The Fiery Furnaces
Wednesday @ Outland
The Fiery Furnaces’ “Rehearsing My Choir” was a soulfully microcosmic pop collaboration of TFF’s central siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger with their late grandmother, Olga Santoros. “Bitter Tea” less challengingly served up Eleanor’s more sultry tones, suggesting a ruefully surviving Karen Carpenter. “Widow City” turned her into a brooding, b-movie troublemaker. The Furnaces’ current “I’m Going Away” has Eleanor channeling the early, innocent fervor of Smokey Robinson and Michael Jackson, simultaneously foreshadowing later detours. Matthew’s cinematically edited catchiness keeps credibility crackling, as relationships burn on (ditto in their volatile shows).
re: "cinematically...crackling...burn on," think I was thinking of old nitrate film stock, this writhing along the edge of frames you can see even in digital transfers sometimes, the stock eating itself in real time (or digital stills of same, in the family album for inst)(pages fluttering like crazy onstage)

cmon FFs just tell us what the fuck yer up to

https://d1wtzzt4oxg683.cloudfront.net/images/covers/originals_optimised/29/181779.jpg

The Fiery Furnaces
Down at the So and So on Somewhere
Third Man / TMR684
Having collectively released eight solo albums between them since their last album they released together as The Fiery Furnaces over a decade ago, Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger finally unpause their career together. A brand new 7” single available on Third Man, ‘Down At The So And So On Somewhere’, picks up where they left off brilliantly.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:pJlgbE-tpWMJ:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/181779-the-fiery-furnaces-down-at-the-so-and+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Wikipedia also lists a new single titled "Fortune Teller’s Revenge.”

Searching around for those titles just seems to retrieve inactive pages of online record shops; I apologize for being momentarily irked by the garbled webcache link above.

https://thefieryfurnaces.bandcamp.com/track/down-at-the-so-and-so-on-somewhere

kinda disappointing

I like it but it sounds like a demo.

This song is good, not as good as the high points of their oeuvre but little is

Anyone buying tickets to these new shows? I don’t think I’ll have a fully vaccinated household yet by November (and they’re playing in like my least favorite L.A. venue).

I don't mind the El Rey that much, but after seeing them several times back then I'm kinda unexcited? I want to hear how the shows are first. I'm there if they play all of Blueberry Boat.

Fred Armisen on the bill is a huge turn-off.

i have never seen them and hope to one day. i just can't see being inside for a show at the moment and i'm vaccinated. if this was outdoors i might have been more tempted.

I wouldn’t mind seeing them but I’m not going to Brooklyn this year

(Or to any shows this year honestly)

yah, I should reiterate that I'm not going to any shows this year too.

Anyone see any of the shows? Looks like they’re back in the studio (per Eleanor’s Instagram).

I poked around to see if they’ve done any new interviews, but none that I can find. That’s interesting to me—they did a lot of press back in the day, Matt always had a lot to say, they were very active online, etc. Now, their “engagement” seems limited to Eleanor’s social media… Matt is silent, as far as I can tell.

An interviewer would almost surely ask them why they went on such an abrupt (and lengthy) hiatus, and maybe they don’t want to talk about that? There must be a story there. It’s not like they just petered out… they had various projects going in 2009:

The last time we talked you had an extravagant rock opera in the works. Do you still have plans to do this?

MF: We are going to do that. Eleanor was never into it, but now, since we have put out our regular record, we’ll be doing these short little operas live. We might record them live, or eventually record them in the studio, but it won’t be a part of our normal record releasing cycle. Does that make any sense? So we’ll play a different set of shows in which we present our rock opera and maybe we’ll put it out in some form, but really it’s about playing it. Then we have our normal records on the side.

So then what’s the Democracy in America project all about?

MF: That’s a different thing too. It’s actually Dem-Rock-cracy in America. But the next thing we have is a silent record where we don’t provide any audio. In other words, we have a record but the fans play the songs. It will be in book form with sheet music and instructions. Dem-Rock-cracy is a set of us playing music written or determined by things that fans have given us, like bits of paper from their purse or receipts. It’ll be a normal recording, but first it will just be vinyl.

I suspect the spigot will open again once the album is on the verge of coming out, or once wider touring is underway at least.

tickets are half off on goldstar for the la show! im def going to check it out. ill come back with a report keeping mind i only ever heard blueberry boat and loved it but forgot it.

But the next thing we have is a silent record where we don’t provide any audio. In other words, we have a record but the fans play the songs. It will be in book form with sheet music and instructions.

interpreting beck actually doing this a few years later as a continuation of that weird feud they had going for a little bit

Ah - I thought the L.A. show was this past week. I’m tempted, but a Wed. night show is pretty rough stuff…

New live album for Bandcamp Day
https://thefieryfurnaces.bandcamp.com/album/stuck-in-my-head

^^for anyone who's never checked this out... it absolutely rips. 0 guitars, 0 overdubs, 100% rock 'n f'n roll!

(wish I had seen them on that tour)