Stone
09-15-2004, 04:02 PM
I saw Fiery Furnacers live last night in Cleveland. To sum it up in one word: WOW!
The show was at the Beachland Tavern, and I'm bad at estimating these things, but I'd guess you can maybe fit 150 people in there. At any rate, the place is small. I got there early and got the best seat in the house (which total 2 booths and about 20 seats at the bar). We were maybe 15 feet from the stage.
The first act was The Gris Gris, who I assumed were a local act, but they weren't. I (as well as the person I was with) enjoyed these guys. A lot of "Sister Ray" type stuff with some Nuggets garage/psych rock thrown in. They were fairly noisy and they could refine their style some, but they were pretty good.
Next up was White Magic. The only thing I heard about this band was that it had a female lead and that they opened up for Cat Power. About 30 seconds into the first song, I saw why they opened for Cat Power. Some of the songs could have been Cat Power songs. Granted, the lead singer didn't have quite the voice Chan does, but there was a striking similarity in style. Good, but not great.
Finally, Fiery Furnaces were up. We were contemplating before the show whether they would play with a full band, or just as a two piece (brother and sister act). They started setting up and it was clear they were playing as a full band. The other two members of the band were two really young guys, who played drums and bass, and the bass player threw in a little keyboard from time to time too. I had heard only generally about their live show, and that it was different from their albums. Understatement of the year, that is. I had no idea what I was in for. Their main set was about an hour, non-stop (with the exception of about a 5 second break that I don't think was planned). Those of you who know Blueberry Boat know how many of the songs are actually multiple songettes (I just made that word up) melded together to tell the whole story of the song. This was how their entire set was, but they did not play one song from the albums from start to finish. Instead, it was pieces of the songs all (seemingly randomly) strewn together. The snippets were anywhere from 15 seconds to a few minutes, and then they'd move right into the next snippet. The sister did about 95% of the singing, even singing some of the parts that her brother handled on Blueberry Boat. It all pieced together well and they actually played a couple of the snippets multiple times, but in different styles. And about the styles, for the most part the style(s) of the music wasn't close to the style on the albums. In fact, a couple of the songs, err, snippets, I only recognized because of the lyrics. They styles varied from synth/guitar pop like most of Blueberry Boat is to an all-out Ramones' style punk. Crazy. Early on, they played part of the title track to Blueberry Boat, and my friend hit the nail right on the head with that one: it sounded like Devo. Some were done slowly, some fastly, some new-wavy, and others straight ahead rock. The drummer was really good, and full of energy all the way through (and he'd have to be to play like that for an hour straight). All in all, they probably played most of most of the songs on at least Blueberry Boat, but at three or four different places in the set. For an encore, just the brother/sister duo came out and played two real songs with just guitar and vocals. I had heard neither song before.
I can say this with certainty: I've never seen anything like that show - ever. It was quite entertaining and I really enjoyed it, but if you are considering seeing them, do not expect to hear anything close to what is found on their records.
The show was at the Beachland Tavern, and I'm bad at estimating these things, but I'd guess you can maybe fit 150 people in there. At any rate, the place is small. I got there early and got the best seat in the house (which total 2 booths and about 20 seats at the bar). We were maybe 15 feet from the stage.
The first act was The Gris Gris, who I assumed were a local act, but they weren't. I (as well as the person I was with) enjoyed these guys. A lot of "Sister Ray" type stuff with some Nuggets garage/psych rock thrown in. They were fairly noisy and they could refine their style some, but they were pretty good.
Next up was White Magic. The only thing I heard about this band was that it had a female lead and that they opened up for Cat Power. About 30 seconds into the first song, I saw why they opened for Cat Power. Some of the songs could have been Cat Power songs. Granted, the lead singer didn't have quite the voice Chan does, but there was a striking similarity in style. Good, but not great.
Finally, Fiery Furnaces were up. We were contemplating before the show whether they would play with a full band, or just as a two piece (brother and sister act). They started setting up and it was clear they were playing as a full band. The other two members of the band were two really young guys, who played drums and bass, and the bass player threw in a little keyboard from time to time too. I had heard only generally about their live show, and that it was different from their albums. Understatement of the year, that is. I had no idea what I was in for. Their main set was about an hour, non-stop (with the exception of about a 5 second break that I don't think was planned). Those of you who know Blueberry Boat know how many of the songs are actually multiple songettes (I just made that word up) melded together to tell the whole story of the song. This was how their entire set was, but they did not play one song from the albums from start to finish. Instead, it was pieces of the songs all (seemingly randomly) strewn together. The snippets were anywhere from 15 seconds to a few minutes, and then they'd move right into the next snippet. The sister did about 95% of the singing, even singing some of the parts that her brother handled on Blueberry Boat. It all pieced together well and they actually played a couple of the snippets multiple times, but in different styles. And about the styles, for the most part the style(s) of the music wasn't close to the style on the albums. In fact, a couple of the songs, err, snippets, I only recognized because of the lyrics. They styles varied from synth/guitar pop like most of Blueberry Boat is to an all-out Ramones' style punk. Crazy. Early on, they played part of the title track to Blueberry Boat, and my friend hit the nail right on the head with that one: it sounded like Devo. Some were done slowly, some fastly, some new-wavy, and others straight ahead rock. The drummer was really good, and full of energy all the way through (and he'd have to be to play like that for an hour straight). All in all, they probably played most of most of the songs on at least Blueberry Boat, but at three or four different places in the set. For an encore, just the brother/sister duo came out and played two real songs with just guitar and vocals. I had heard neither song before.
I can say this with certainty: I've never seen anything like that show - ever. It was quite entertaining and I really enjoyed it, but if you are considering seeing them, do not expect to hear anything close to what is found on their records.