Categories : Miscellany, Music Reviews.
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Rating: 2.5/5 Released: October 25, 2005 Reviewer: Nathan Atnikov |
Definitely one of the strangest and most challenging releases of the year, The Fiery Furnaces’ Rehearsing My Choir is a love it or hate it affair from the outset. Part art project and part diary reading, the brother-sister team of Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger put all of the recollections of their grandmother to music, even using grandma’s voice as sort of a flashback mechanism.
The album tells of grandmother Olga Sarantos’ life growing up in Chicago, which makes Rehearsing My Choir an interesting counterpoint to Sufjan Stevens’ album, Illinoise. For those of you familiar with Stevens’ album, you’ll be surprised to hear that it’s far more accessible than this often incoherent album by the Furnaces. While an admirable project, the problem is that it’s an extremely personal album for the artists, and surprisingly impersonal for the listener. It doesn’t seem to matter to the Furnaces if you listen to it or not.
The accelerated recollections of Sarantos are complemented by a constantly changing musical background, alternately backed by everything from quiet acoustic guitar to thrashing synthesizer, from delicate piano to grandiose organ. Is it self-indulgent? Absolutely. Compelling? More so than you’d think. Are you going to listen to it more than once? Probably not. Rehearsing My Choir certainly has some redeeming value, but all too often it feels like an inside joke, and we aren’t invited.
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