Buzzin Music

The Fiery Furnaces – Take Me Round Again – album review

The Fiery Furnaces : Take Me Round Again

No strangers to releasing albums with as much commercial marketing potential as Songs Of The Humpback Whale (Various Artists), The Fiery Furnaces are releasing an album of cover versions of the songs that appeared on their 2009 release I’m Going Away. Each sibling (Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger) covers six songs, with some duplicates -  both, for example, presenting a version of the song ‘I’m Going Away’.

Matthew Friedberger explained that the idea came having asked people to send in re-writes of the album, and thought they should do the same. The Fiery Furnaces are not shy of rearrangements, as anyone who has seen their live shows will testify. I once saw them perform a 25 minute set where they joined all their snappy 2 minute wonders into one long opus.

Very little on Take Me Round Again stays the same, apart from lyrics. And it is, above all, the lyrics that end up dominating. Both siblings choose to use sparse instrumentation – just a piano or a guitar – and voice.

Eleanor explains that her recordings were the natural outcome of her practice at home, where she fiddles with the accepted versions of existing Fiery Furnaces songs. She wanted to release these rearranged songs as their take on a greatest hits package (really, it doesn’t surprise me) but decided for this way of doing things.

The strongest songs on I’m Going Away come out best on Take Me Round Again, whatever that may tell you about the group. ‘Even In The Rain’ and ‘Ray Bouvier’ utilise Eleanor’s brilliant lyrical delivery to the best results, and so it is little surprise that in their stripped down versions, they highlight this all the more. Elsewhere, Matthew does a good version of ‘Cut the Cake‘, with reverb on voice and guitar making the song a harrowing take on the original (sounding like echoey bluesman Rainer).

Both Eleanor and Matthew’s versions of ‘I’m Going Away’, stripped of urgency and pace, meander through a greyscapes of neither-here-nor-thereness, which can be incredibly grating or can be interpreted as an apt representation of the ultimately hopeless and desolate situation that is being presented: “Please tell me man what more can I do / I can’t get along with you”.

Everything speaks against this record. Why, if these versions are good enough to be released, shouldn’t they have been favoured on the original album? Why, if the siblings are good enough alone, should they still release albums together? As with the Fiery Furnaces’ music, much stems from intuition – spontaneous ideas that end up taking form – and that is no different here, so it must be judged on the same level as any other Fiery Furnaces release. Unfortunately, however, it is not their most classic moment. There’s some glimpses of interest for the more hardened fanbase, but one gets the impression that even they will be hoping that the siblings return to working together again soon