Alright, let’s get one thing off the chest: Eleanor Friedberger in white hot jeans is enough to make any red-blooded male start speaking like his tongue is five sizes too big.
Which is why, after the show, when I asked her to sign a copy of
Gallowsbird Bark, I mumbled out something which sounded like something else.
I tried to say, “I’m a horrible fan, I’ve never asked anyone for their autograph before,” and she heard “You’re a horrible band, blaeh bluu blahjeh blah bleh.”
Likewise, when I tried to pay her brother a compliment about his intricate and expansive songwriting, I just ended up saying, “Dude, you guys are gods!”
I didn’t so much crack under pressure as just melt into a fanboy.
The show itself was far outside any such disappointing behavior; loud, and less strategic, the concert was a great sonic embellishment of their albums. The differences in tryin
g to reproduce are largely supplanted by noise and power, though Matt Friedberger had a decent set of effects pedals to mimic the orchestra weirdness of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird. The Who and Led Zepplin were on the stage in spirit as much as any other influence, much moreso than on their albums. Another big difference was Eleanor taking over most of the vocals, which is no surprise given the versatility and personality of her voice, but it disappointed me not hearing the of Matt’s lines from “Chief Inspector Blancheflower”:
And said Michael is there something that you need to say to me?
Well I don’t know how to tell you.
You can tell me any
Thing that you want ‘cept I started seeing Jenny:
I started seeing Jenny.
My Jenny?
And he looked down at the floor.
You know damn well she ain’t your Jenny no more.
Selections from their newer album, Rehearsing My Choir, were reinterpreted completely, with Eleanor singing all of her grandmother’s lines, and eschewing most of the rambling complexity of the instrumentation in favor of raw chord power. Which I don’t blame them for; Busta Rhymes can’t rap as fast during a concert, but he’s still a presence and has enormous energy; likewise with the FF. Bringing the lyrical and biographical elements of Choir to a live performance is a big counterintuitive. The album has been described by multiple reviews as an experiment, a sort of oral family history in the modern mode. But the selections they played from Choir were crowd-pleasingly fun, and its tempting to think what a live version of that album might do for the original.
In any case, see them live if they’re coming by, and at the least check out the links below.
- A review of Blueberry Boat on Slate, with multiple links to song clips
- An incredible analysis of all the songs on Blueberry Boat
- Band Website
g to reproduce are largely supplanted by noise and power, though Matt Friedberger had a decent set of effects pedals to mimic the orchestra weirdness of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird. The Who and Led Zepplin were on the stage in spirit as much as any other influence, much moreso than on their albums. Another big difference was Eleanor taking over most of the vocals, which is no surprise given the versatility and personality of her voice, but it disappointed me not hearing the of Matt’s lines from “Chief Inspector Blancheflower”:
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