Fiery Furnaces

Matthew Friedberger wants you to think that he’s lazy, but don’t believe him. The Fiery Furnaces, Matthew’s band along with his sister Eleanor, stands as one of this decade’s most consistent outputs of indie rock, releasing an album every year since their 2003 debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark. Seven years — and albums — later, the sibling duo has landed with their most straightforward and accessible album yet: the folksy rocker, I’m Going Away.

Just days before the release of I’m Going Away, Stereo Subversion caught the Fiery Furnaces’ musical madman eager to discuss the album’s new approach, the dangers of pop music and whether or not being in a rock band means you should have to work hard. Here’s what he had to say.

SSv: This is the Fiery Furnaces eighth album and you guys have consistently been putting out an album every year since 2003, plus you put out a double solo album in 2006.

Matthew Friedberger: Yeah.

SSv: So would you say you’re prolific or are you a workaholic?

Matthew: Other bands must be really lazy. I’d like to be hard working, but we’re not. It’s just not true. No, I just like to play music, and what I always say is that we’re not popular enough that we have to make a record and then go tour around constantly for two years, but we’ve just been popular enough where we can keep making records. It’s the economics. It’s determined by economics.

SSv: It’s just that kind of balance. Well, do you like it that way, where you get to spend more time making records?

Matthew: Oh, I’d like to spend more time making records. Like I say, I wish I could say we were more hard working. We’re really lazy and we should really be making more. I don’t see why people aren’t making more records now because you kno… there’s still record stores and you can’t have too many records in a record store. They won’t stock them. But otherwise I can’t see why other people aren’t recording a lot and putting it out for the people who know them, you know? To keep them happy, or interested.

Maybe a lot of people are doing that, I guess. I don’t know. People might be giving away things, or doing tour CDs or something like that.

SSv: So the songs for I’m Going Away, it says were a collaboration between you and Eleanor, where she wrote the lyrics and you wrote the bulk of the music.

Matthew: Well, she wrote most of the lyrics.

SSv: Ok. So how does the songwriting process work for the two of you? Who does what first? How does everything get started?

Matthew: Well, this record is different since the past records I just wrote the songs or she was involved with the lyrics to start with, and this one was meant to be spontaneous and casual. So she had words and she gave them to me and I would write the song in the room with her, or in a different room and come back and play it for her [Laughs]. It’s good that our records have a different way of doing it, because presumably it gives the record its own atmosphere, if it was produced in a different way. I mean produced, not as in record producing, but produced in a more general sense.

And also it keeps you from getting bored, I guess. I don’t know. And hopefully keeps the people listening, if it doesn’t sound all the same. In a broader context they all sound the same, but in a small context they all sound totally different. And that’s probably the right idea, we think.

So this record, yeah, was written spontaneously. We would either be in the room together or I would go off in a different room and fabricate the object [Laughs]. And then bring it back after she had given me words. So the record in that way is different.

SSv: You’ve mentioned that all of your records have a similar sound going through them, but they are very different album to album. Is that just how it works out, or is it something you strive to do?

Matthew: It’s intentional, yeah. It’s intentional. Some bands are the sound of the people playing them together, but if you’re a songwriterly band, whatever that might mean, then it doesn’t make sense to have every record have the same approach, either for the songwriting or the way you arrange it, or in the way you dispose of the sounds, the way you produce it or mix it. You know? I think you have an obligation to do something to earn your pay, your huge paycheck.

So, yeah, we like to sound different. You can’t sound the same. You could have one great idea, I guess. You could be The Ramones and then it would make sense for you to sound the same record to record. But unless you’re that sort of band, and I don’t know what that sort of band would be like now, it seems to me that you’re better off striving to have your records sound different. And of course some people won’t like them. Some people who like the one record will not like another record, but that’s what you have to do.

SSv: In the long run, I think those are the bands that end up being more respected anyway, the ones who did try new things as opposed to just staying the same.

Matthew: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of bands maybe they’d like to sound different but the bass player would like it to sound like a calypso band and their guitar player wants it to sound like Norwegian folk songs. I mean, they can’t. It’s a function of the collaboration that they can’t sound different, and that’s not a bad thing, I suppose. It’s just the way it goes.

But because it’s just the two of us as far as making a record, or deciding on a record… we play with Bob and Jason a lot now and they’re part of the band pretty much, but we still make the decisions, so we just have to convince each other. If Eleanor wanted to make a Norwegian folk record, she’d just have to convince one other person, you know? But there’s no way she could convince me to make a Norwegian folk album. [Laughs] I would veto that. That would filibuster to the end!

SSv: So are you and Eleanor typically on the same page as far as what direction you want to take your albums in?

Matthew: Uh, yeah. We have a very similar taste in rock music. Um, yes. We are on the same page at all times. But, of course, we’re not. [Laughs] And that’s a good thing. I think that’s just a function of, because we think we could do this and that or this and that. It’s more of an editing problem than a disagreeing problem. I mean editing, not when we’re making the individual record, it’s more what record should we make next. Once we’re making the record we don’t really disagree.

SSv: Now the new one, I’m Going Away, is the most straightforward of all of your albums with fewer electronic elements and all of that.

Matthew: Yeah, it’s very casual.

SSv: Yeah. So what interested you or inspired you in following that change in direction?

Matthew: Well, we hadn’t made a record like that before. [Laughs] It was an easy choice to make because it was something we hadn’t done. I mean, we had had simple songs in the past, but they weren’t standard rock band arrangement songs. So [Laughs] we wanted to make a record with standard rock band arrangements, but not especially aggressive. Like two people playing after work, sounding. Like a sense of older people [Laughs] going into their hut and playing the songs for fun. Older people, I mean like 90 year old people. No I’m just kidding. I don’t think it sounds like 90 year old people. I think it sounds like a combination…it could be a very good 13-year-old drummer, and a very fat, 61 year old piano player. I don’t mean fat, I mean large. Excuse me. But it could be a mix of all different ages, but it’s meant to sound very casual.

And that’s when I say that a lot of our past records are very elaborated. They’re made up of very simple tunes, but very well developed, so much so that people don’t notice that they’re related to each other. One song will have lots of different parts. And it’ll be a simple tune very elaborated, but I have to do a lot of work to make it like that. Lots of hard, hard work, but it’s actually very gratifying.

But on this record, we wanted our listener’s imagination to have to do the hard work of elaborating the song into complicated processes. That’s the idea, giving more work to the listener. Does that make any sense?

SSv: Yeah, definitely. Something that was sort of similar that was mentioned in the note that came along with the album was that “the drama in music is provided by the lives of people who listen to it,” which is something that I’ve always believed.

Matthew: Yeah, isn’t that the normal thing that you’re supposed to believe? I think that’s a very conventional, I mean, good notion that that’s how people use pop songs. They use it for their own purposes to understand themselves, dramatize themselves, console themselves or make themselves angry about whatever the hell is going on in their life that might not have anything to do with what that song is supposedly about. That’s what they taught us, right? Not in school, but wherever we learned.

SSv: Exactly. That’s how I’ve related to music since I was very, very small. But that note goes on to say that this is also pop music’s “problem or danger.”

Matthew: That’s right. Because of the escapism element of it. It can provide an element of bad escapism, where people are using the music to create an identity for themselves that is self-destructive or difficult, illusory or something that makes their lives actually more difficult. Does that make any sense? Whether it’s that they’re lost in the silliness mentality of a wonderful love song [Laughs] I don’t know if there’s like any right wing, skinhead punk rock anymore, but that would be the easiest example to agree on as a pop music that could lead somebody astray.

But it doesn’t have to be as obvious as that. It can be people, they use the music to create identities for themselves to avoid their problems; create identities for themselves that don’t actually work well with their lives, or use it to avoid their lives. That’s all I’m saying. It’s just meant to be a platitude.

SSv: Now all of the songs on the new album are originals except for the title track which says it’s traditional, arranged by you two-

Matthew: Well, that’s a joke. It’s not quite true. The lyrics are all from different traditional songs. There’s a song called “I’m Going Away”, which is an old song. And it might have a writer. I don’t know. But they’re lyrics from a bunch of different songs, from the folk song days, [Laughs] which is still continuing, that they would play often. So it’s going away into the land, not the land of nod, but the land of random old lyrics. Which is a great place to be in America. The land of random old lyrics. [Laughs] That’s a state I’d like to live in. I guess that’s the state of Illinois, or the state of New York, in my opinion. The land of random old lyrics. So that’s what the record is.

And there’s another song, the song at the end, goes along with that. “Take Me Around Again”, which is, the lyrics are mostly song titles of old, like, commercial songs. Sheet music. Parlor music songs. And the verses are just the song titles in a different order, so it’s about singing folk songs over and over again, like we all aspire to do.

SSv: So the bio also said that you’re working on a silent, non-record record?

Matthew: The silent record! Yes. The silent record. Bands can’t sell audio any more today, so we’re not going to provide it on this record. It’s just going to be sheet music to songs or the instructions for songs that are more abstract or conceptual. And it will be either very elaborated with the sheet music and tablature or it will be written instructions or verbal instructions and then we will have shows of fan bands playing songs from the album.

It’s redundant anymore to provide audio as the commercial item because it’s not a commercial item. You can get it for free. People buy the CD as a token of allegiance or as a habit. I don’t know. The consumption of it isn’t exactly about possessing the music because apparently you can get it for free on the Internet. I don’t know about that stuff, but, I’m told that’s true.

SSv: Indeed it is. [Laughs]

Matthew: So we’re very excited about that. On that record we provide songs for our fans to play and then we’re having another thing, or it will come out a little bit after it, an album of songs where fans have “written.” They’re determined by things that fans have given us. For instance, if a fan gives us a drug store receipt, or a grocery store receipt, then the music will be determined by what’s on the receipt. For instance, how many choruses or verses in the song will be determined, by the price of some item or something like that. So one thing where the fans play our music, and the other where we make audible the previously silent soundtrack to their life.

SSv: That’s cool.

Matthew: And then we’re going to have a normal record.

SSv: I still don’t believe that you’re lazy!

Matthew: Well, yeah, it is lazy. We’re lazy! I haven’t written a song today. I mean, why wouldn’t I? If you were a person who, I don’t know, maybe you’re a pharmacist or pharmacist’s assistant working in a pharmacy or you’re a legal aid or a law secretary, or a nurse, or a nurses’ assistant. Or if you’re a custodian at a community college. All the great jobs of the people who are making this country work, and making it the great country that it is. If they woke up and they said, “Ok, look, you can’t be a dentist’s assistant anymore, you have to be a musician,” they’d probably be happy to write songs. Nobody’s like “Awww…I wanted to be a dental assistant and instead I have to play in a rock band.” You know? So you should be pretty excited if you get to be in a rock band for whatever period of time you get to do it as you job. You should be pretty excited to do it, whatever that means.

Of course it’s confusing, is being in a rock band about writing songs or is it about being drunk? Maybe it’s about being drunk and lazy and not working. There’s this quote that I always have in my head. It’s Bob Dylan talking about hearing Elvis, he said “When I heard Elvis for the first time, I knew I would never have a boss.” That’s what he said. That’s a very interesting remark in my opinion. I don’t know if he thought that, and maybe he didn’t quite say that, he was quoted. But I think he did probably think something like that.

So rock music, is meant to be a distraction or an antidote to a lot of people’s lives. And for the people who play it, it’s supposed to be something that lets you escape some normal life. And the thing about rock music is that there’s not much difference between the people who are into it and the people who play it, supposedly. Because you could not play an instrument at all for all your life, and then you could practice for three months and you could play in a rock band. Maybe it wouldn’t be the best part of it, but you could do it. So it’s interesting. [Laughs] It’s still work, working hard. I rambled on there, but maybe you’re not supposed to work hard? Even at being a rock musician.

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Tagged as: Indie Rock

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