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The Fiery Furnaces Rehearsing My Choir Released in 2005 9.8/10 Styles Ragtime Experimental Rock Singer/Songwriter Song Highlights A Candymaker's Knife Guns Under the Counter Seven Silver Curses |
If you've read my Top 20 Albums of 2005, then you'll already know how this story ends - Rehearsing My Choir is freaking incredible. Now, the detailed explaination. First of all, it must be pointed out that this is absolutely not an album for people with no patience, or those who prefer easily digestable slices of pop over complex story-songs. Rehearsing My Choir is much less an album of songs than it is a story, one which is several decades long, and comes across like amateur theatre set to a madcap selection of ADD-ragtime backing and eclectic pop music. For anyone who's already listened to last year's Blueberry Boat, you'll at least be moderately prepared for the Fiery's imaginative take on the concept album, but the discrepancies between the two releases are highly evident from the start. Most noticeably, the majority of the album's vocals are delivered by the Friedburger's grandmother, Olga Sarantos, who also serves as the story's main character. There are some big differences in the music, too. While Blueberry Boat's meandering epics were separated by concise pop/rock breathers such as "Straight Street" and "My Dog Was Lost But Now He's Found," there are no such interludes to be found on Rehearsing My Choir. In fact, the story running through the album is so broad and convoluted, that there isn't really time to rest at all, making this one of those "start-to-finish" listening experiences that really aren't for the short of attention. Getting more to the point, what about the album itself? What's on offer here? With an album as genuinely epic (and I know that term is overused, but really, this album is gigantic) as this, it's tricky figuring out exactly where to begin, so I'll tackle this in sequential track order. We begin with "The Garfield El," which was apparently the album's original title. Breathless ragtime piano springs out of the silence, and the song is immediately alive and kicking. Sarantos' is heard exclaiming "Faster hammers! Faster hammers!", and immediately the album's crowning idiosynchrasy is revealed - Grandma sounds like a muppet, a cartoon, a frog on downers, or perhaps you can choose your own suitably humourous point of comparison. However, there's a certain tired wisdom underneath that aging croak, and the album is made particularly affecting and authentic by hearing the story from the lady herself. Her delivery is great, too, as some of the album's most powerful moments of humour and poignancy are made so by her perfect timing and accentuations. Elanour handles the remainder of the vocals, and her interplay with Sarantos is wonderful, ranging from voicing flashbacks to narration to playing supporting characters in Sarantos' convoluted tales. As "The Garfield El" slows to a gentle piano melody, Sarantos sings "I'd like to tell you a story kids, but instead I'll change the subject" and at this point the detour into Sarantos' incredible past truly begins. This particular piano melody is direclty refered to by Sarantos in her following lyrics (something done a number of times throughout the album, as large portions of her story revolve around working as a music teacher and choir director - hence the title). Sarantos drones "Listen to this tune that sounds like a condolence card, bought at the last minute for someone you can't stand, for someone you never liked," and with those words one of the album's several recurring musical themes is born. These pieces of gentle piano, which become increasingly familiar throughout the album, assist greatly in giving the music a level of unity to match that of the subject matter. Second track, "The Wayfaring Granddaughter," is about as close to an accessible and easily-digestable song as the album ever gets. The song's baroque-disco backing is immediately noticeable and highly original, and is splintered by breaks of ambient synth and folky guitar. In this particular track, Elanour takes on the song's titular role, while Sarantos interjects with lamentations of her granddaughter's poor life choices - at least, they're poor from her perspective. The interplay between the two gives way to some of Rehearsing My Choir's early lyrical gems, such as "My beautiful granddaughter who dyed her beautiful red-brown hair black / When she turned fifteen behind my back." The song goes on to focus on two objects of the granddaughter's affection, both named Kevin, which leads to the hilarious statement-and-response of "Once upon a time there were two Kevins" / "You mean two JERKS." The song winds to a gentle close, and Sarantos reminisces "Remember when I was young?" over a backing of gentle woodwind instrumentation. "A Candymaker's Knife" follows, and is especially delightful. The song opens with some great vocal acrobatics by both Elanour and Sarantos, as they sing, completely out of unison, "Well I learned braisin', saucin', meringue and sift, knead, flute, and flour each Thursday for an hour / Cobblers and plumb-cakes, tarts savory and sweet, a Candymaker's knife in my handbag!" These culinary musings are forgotten as quickly as they're introduced, though, and the song goes on to recount the leadup to Sarantos' first meeting with her husband's parents - a tale laden with mishaps, as Sarantos manages to accidentally get drunk prior to the meeting, which provides probably my favourite lyrics on the album - "With a look as if something had stunk / 'She's just DRUNK!' she hissed / I reached for the arm of the armchair / And missed." It's a touchingly amusing moment, with a very flawed, human feeling to it. It's little moments like this which make Sarantos so fascinating a character and Rehearsing My Choir such an entertaining think-piece. Like "A Candymaker's Knife," the following tracks "We Wrote Letters Everyday" and "48/23 22nd Street" are both fractured to include multiple mini-stories. Across these two tracks the story focuses on Santaros' separation from her husband during the war, and their correspondence with one another; the pair's wedding, in which Sarantos discovers her husbands extended family contains eight preists, all of whom fight over the right to officiate the proceedings; and a particularly obscure story revolving around Sarantos' aunt, which is just too convoluted to describe. "Guns Under the Counter" is a major standout, with it's fast-paced intro featuring a tale of a bowling alley and lunch counter which is frequented by gangsters, a gunfight in which a boy is injured, and a man who runs a donut shop and works as a doctor on the side - and just wait until you hear about his techniques. The sped-up ragtime closing is even more delightful, and eventually the song segues into "Seven Silver Curses," the album's longest and most lyrically ambitious track. Here the focus is shifted to cheating husbands, mischevious sisters, second-rate fortune-telling gypsies, magic potions and all manner of betrayal and intrigue. It's a rollicking, ridiculously good time - a song with enough of a story to full an entire concept album, all crammed into 11 utterly hectic minutes. "Though Let's Be Fair," "Slaving Away" and "Rehearsing My Choir" follow, and tie together so closely that they could almost be considered a single track. Sarantos' story continues, covering the later days of her marriage, her work as choir director, her disputes with the church and her encounters with an old lover. "Slaving Away" in particular is incredibly beautiful, featuring some of Elanour's most perfect vocal-work to date, accompanied by a memorable 60s-pop melody, played to perfection by Matthew across a variety of different intruments. This song-suite is emotionally draining and musically exhausting throughout, and when the album finally winds to a close on the melancholy "Does it Remind You of When," and we find Sarantos, standing below the sunset, before the graves of her husband, sister, father and mother, it's awfully hard to think of a more perfectly poignant place to end her amazing story. At this point, I worry that I've revealed too much of Rehearsing My Choir's plot. Then I remember, what I've said is only the tip of the iceberg. The Fiery Furnaces have brought Sarantos' world so vividly to life, full of such rich detail and character, and placed it over a backing of such mesmerisingly baroque "pop music," that summarising it all in a single review would be an insurmountable task. I'm not sure I've ever encountered an album that gives so much in the way of epic storytelling, making it a downright essential album - one which remains vibrant, thrilling and thoroughly interesting even after dozens of listens. |