Jack White’s Third Man Records provides an overview of The Fiery Furnaces, a duo comprised of siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger. Forming in New York City in 2000, “their debut album Gallowsbird’s Bark was released to critical acclaim in 2003. In the following seven years, they released eight more albums and toured extensively throughout North America, Europe, Australia and Japan.” The band was active during the 2000s, ceased operations during the 2010s, but apparently is staging a 2020 comeback. AllMusic describes the band’s focus as a “sprawling sound that draws on influences from indie rock to musical theater.” Read the entire AllMusic band bio — it definitely shatters the “quirky” meter!
Describing the sprawl is The AV Club‘s review of the 2009 track “Even In the Rain”: “The Fiery Furnaces’ albums are generally littered with idiosyncratic flourishes that sometimes seem directly designed to alienate the band’s less-patient listeners: backward tracking, tempo shifts, extended keyboard noise solos, and key changes, among others … on stretches of ‘Even In The Rain,’ the song sounds like a relatively straightforward ballad with a strong keyboard hook. But the chorus, which consists only of the words “even in the rain,” slides the song between keys several times, lending a lot of unpredictability to such a short, simple phrase.”
The key changes are unconventional and are wielded casually; the first one hits at 0:26, just before the vocal enters. There’s little sense of directionality or catharsis to the modulations; instead, each one is a page in a short and vivid animation flipbook which seems to advance or reverse the plotline at random.
