THE FIERY FURNACES
Bitter Tea
Fat Possum
· Everyone’s favourite bonkers brother and sister get weirder still.
I’ve always stood up for The Fiery Furnaces, even to the point of defending last year’s Rehearsing my Choir – in which the Friedberger siblings’ grandmother recited her life story set to schizophrenic tack piano and farting synths – as a worthwhile diversion few bands would be brave enough to attempt.
Propped up by similar (albeit somewhat more complete) instrumentation than Choir, Bitter Tea acts as a true followup to 2003’s maniacal Blueberry Boat. As alienating and impenetrable as it can be, Bitter Tea is still an intoxicating display of sibling imagination run amok. While a lot of what’s here is hard to classify as actual "songs" – there’s no such thing as a verse-chorus-verse setup in sight – the closest being the slide guitar-driven "Police Sweater Blood Vow," the best parts of Bitter Tea are those left least restrained. I couldn’t begin to tell you what something like "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry" is about, and not just because so much of it’s spun unintelligibly backwards.
But that’s the other joy in listening to The Fiery Furnaces – we’ve all got inside jokes and sibling stories hidden so deep they couldn’t possibly make sense to an outsider. Listening to Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger makes me think of my own brother and the stupid things we’d spend hours talking about that I still find hilarious. Combine that with never knowing quite where the Friedbergers are going and what will happen next – Bitter Tea reveals itself as another weird and wonderful chapter in The Fiery Furnaces’ bizarre storybook.
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