Few albums this year have polarized critics and listeners as much as The Fiery Furnaces' Blueberry Boat. Clocking in at just under eighty minutes, the sprawling work has been labeled by many as an "indie rock opera." Marked by an imaginative, child-like narrative and infectiously minimalist keyboard-driven accompaniment, Blueberry Boat secured The Fiery Furnaces a place in music history outside of the recent garage-rock revival where they had haphazardly been lumped after last year's debut album Gallowsbird's Bark-it is hard to deny the ambition of their latest effort. While it defies conventional pop and rock standards regarding song structure, length and narrative style, Blueberry Boat is ultimately a much more traditional album than it is given credit for. The seemingly non-linear sequencing and spontaneous dynamic, tempo and mood-changes of each song mirror the story being told lyrically with astonishing precision. Siblings Matt and Eleanor Friedberger have created a sound that embraces the music of the 60's while ignoring the aesthetic and conventions that typically define it, removing the boundaries so many rock musicians almost unconsciously place on themselves.

After getting their foot in the door of the corporate music machine, the Furnaces have shown utter disregard for the expectations externally placed on them, creating an album with no discernable single and no definitive audience. While touring with the likes of Wilco and the Shins may seem glamorous, the future of the band will undoubtedly be an uphill struggle. Before and after their show at Brandeis Saturday night, I was able to sit down with Matt (and later Eleanor) to discuss the band, the music and the industry.





justArts: I'm not necessarily going to be asking you questions about the tour, or about the brother/sister dynamic or anything.

Matt Friedberger: Oh, that's too bad.

JA: I just wanted to actually talk to you about music. You just mentioned these "better bands." What better bands are out there? What music do you like?

MF: I like Bob Dylan a lot. I listen to that. And then, I listen to the Rolling Stones a lot. And I listen to Brazilian beat music, this sort of Brazilian rock music.

JA: I hear you guys being compared to other bands and it really seems to be more based off an aesthetic than off the way you sound. When I listen to your music I hear traces of The Who, I think Bob Dylan in terms of the narrative structure, some Beatles and Velvet Underground, Rolling Stones.

MF: Well, that's because... people are trying to compare you to bands that play now as opposed to what you listen to. Other bands, they listen to the same records- well, I don't know. Maybe they don't. But... they drop some famous names. They say, 'Oh, we try to sound like The Who and the Beatles and the Beach Boys.'

JA: Well, obviously, that's somewhat all encompassing.

MF: That's true. But also, you can say that because it makes you sound good. But you're probably not as good as The Beatles.

JA: Yeah. But, then again, it's not like you sound like the White Stripes.

MF: No, we don't go down that road. I don't know what to say. But that's an interesting, that's a good thing. Because they're always cases-it's a genre thing, it's a rock 'n' roll genre thing to take one band and compare them to another band.

JA: Do you feel pigeonholed?

MF: No, because... we get stored with a lot of different pigeons... So it doesn't really matter. But it's important that people have arbitrary reactions, I guess, because its pop music and you're supposed to take [it] in and then use it however you will. If you write a song that's supposed to sound like the Who and it's about a cell phone salesman in Western Asia, and I have a guy come up to me and say 'Hey, I really like that song,'- I'm talking about [the song] "Straight Street." He said, 'I couldn't walk down Straight Street, help me, because, I came out last year and now I couldn't walk down." And [the song's] not anything about that. But, for him, he used it in that way. I mean, that's an exaggeration. People will think of the lyrics meaning anything they want it to. And they're going to imagine the song sounds like whatever they like or don't like. That's a legitimate part of rock music. It's very arbitrary.

JA: I wanna ask you about something you've said, obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek, about-

MF: What, about us being bad?

JA: I mean, it's obviously relative. You're opening for Wilco.

MF: We had this show that we played in Boston where a band called White Magic opened up for us. And White Magic is a lot better than most rock bands. But we didn't pick them to open up for us, though we made friends with them. They were just put on the tour... But the letters people wrote us and the fan mail and internet forums and blogs, writing about White Magic-they hated them. People who were our fans!

But opening bands are there to be disliked. You're supposed to be irritated by them. I remember when I was a kid you thought of opening bands in kind of two ways: If you go to see some dischord band who they bring on tour. You wanted to like them, because they were the band that this band who you admire brought on tour. Then some people thought of opening bands as, 'Fuck you, opening band. Get off the fucking stage...' The band was there for you to hate in order for you to like the other band that much more. And that's why it's interesting to play in the opening spot for such like a big, big band.

JA: Or even the trend now of people just not showing up for the opening band.

MF: Yeah, you don't show up. But if you do show up, you show up back in the bar or whatever.

JA: That's kind of a shame, though, because there are a lot of great opening bands. That's how you get your exposure, that's a necessary part.

MF: That's right. And that's how it works for casual fans who go to live shows. They know they're going to put them out there and people are going to remember the name and go 'Oh, I know that band!' They'll remember the name and then six months later, nine months later, when they're told the band is good they go, 'Yeah, I saw that band! I'm gonna go see them again!' But it happens, though. It happens all the time. Even if they're awful, they say 'I saw them, I saw them.'

JA: 'Everyone else says they're good, so they must have been good...'

MF: But that's fine because there's no standard now, or I don't know if there was before, but people always talk about what they like and what they don't like, and in rock or in pop music... it's a very social phenomenon, for people to like a band. So it has to be considered good before you like it. It's very much a gesture for you to like a band when there're other people who, you think, don't really like it. I mean, to think, my friend doesn't like this band. The girl who I want to be my girlfriend probably doesn't like this band. But I'm gonna like them anyway because of this or that. Or the opposite.

JA: Well why are you guys even making music? It isn't like it's easy. Why bother?

MF: It's really important... well, there's no rationale... There's really only one good reason to do this and that's because you're compelled by emotion and the material. If you're a painter it's probably because you're fascinated by the disposition of paint on the medium. If you make you make rock music, the only thing that you're fascinated with is rock records. And you want to compose the elements of rock records you like in a different way or in a complimentary way. And that's the only excuse to do it. Or, that's what I think. It's immersion in whatever you think or whatever you envision, or imagine it the particular tradition or whatever it is you're playing, and then regurgitate it in a different way and playing with those traditions. Be respectful, but either developing those traditions or maybe debasing them. I don't mean doing a bad job with the tradition because sometimes it can be a great thing to produce something which reminds yourself and other people how great the model of it was... I think there are a lot of people who think that the mainstream should be rock, and I think that means that accepted rock can be more strange. People take that really seriously. People listen to rock music on, like, classic rock stations and you read-I mean, rock history is already written.

JA: So many people want to hold onto this idea that there is a definitive history of "how things happened," and while that is necessary to some degree, it can be very misleading.

MF: Exactly. You can go into the library and read it. The history of rock 'n' roll is written, intelligently. So you take standard theory, especially when you're 13 years old, 12 years old at the time. You read about the Sex Pistols playing, written in kind of probably stupid religious tones.

JA: You're one of the only bands I've heard recently talking about their songs as stories.

And storytelling, especially in the third person, is really absent in a lot of rock music today. It's really refreshing to hear an album that isn't so straightforward, that isn't like a confession, that isn't about 'how I felt that one day.' You're probably channeling those feelings into the music, but in a much more abstract way. But was there something you were going for when writing this record? Was there something you had in mind?

MF: Depends on the song. I want to say it's very important, I think that rock music... can compete with movies and with TV as a narrative form. Because there's so much left- and I'm talking about bigger bands... But even popular bands, the amount of money the record industry has to invest in making a record and promoting it and everything is small compared to a movie or a TV show. But rock, it lends itself to telling stories. Rock bands can tell stories, and even popular bands, they're free to be much weirder than people who make films, movies or TV shows. I think it's an important opportunity to take, because people like stories.

JA: There seems to be a split between bands being very earnest and sincere, versus becoming more cynical, which is kind of an obvious reaction to what's going on in the world today. You guys seem to be, for lack of a better word, playful... like a band that wants to have fun in a non-gimmicky way.

Eleanor Friedberger: [The Flaming Lips] seem like a very playful band, and they have a balance that's kind of similar to ours.

JA: I don't hear enough music like that played; people don't really seem to take that approach. They either take themselves too seriously, or they're intentionally not taking themselves too seriously.

EF: That's true.

F: That's what they like. They either like Ween or they like Morrissey and there's no in between.

EF: It's a combination of, y'know, very crazy and like- the thing about Pavement, is like, obviously those guys were old friends... talking about music for a long time before they began writing, with similar tastes and they had a similar sense of humor and stuff, and that's the only things Matt and I have in common.

JA: They were a bunch of guys who went to college together, didn't even live in the same part of the country, kept in touch, and made a record and toured every few years.

MF: Really, the only reason it was good was because that guy [Steve Malkmus] was a really talented guy. And the only reason we're good is because Eleanor is a really talented girl.

EF: Mmhmm! [Eleanor leaves]

MF: Oh man, that was a good exit line.