Widow City, by The Fiery Furnaces (Double LP on Thrill Jockey)

Description:	2LP inc MP3 version 'n all on Thrill Jockey	UK ORDERS OVER £50 SHIP FREE!
Format:	Double LP
Label:	Thrill Jockey
Price:	£10.99
Catalogue number:	thrill189
Availability:	despatched in 2-5 working days (on average!!)

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What we say

Rating: happy This record left our Ant feeling happy.

Ant here kicking off my bit with a CD from Fiery Furnaces. 'Widow City' was recorded in Chicago by John "Tortoise" Mcentire. I'd love to have a word for something I was well known for inserted between my first and last name like that. Sadly my life isn't all that exciting sp it would probably be something like Anthony "Sleep" Locke. It's pretty unconventional in its arrangements this records. In fact it shifts all over the place from 60's pop into weird wobbly rock bits with some cool volume changes and good old stop start dynamics which are almost operatic. A whole barrage of instruments including woodwind, harps, keyboards, tape loops etc. The brother/ sister duo are talented songwriters, no doubt. You just get the feeling that a great deal of passion, imagination and creative energy has gone into making it. This is their first non Rough Trade album and is out on Thrill Jockey.

What the label says:

Establishing themselves as one of rock music’s most consistently engaging, exciting and thought-provoking bands, The Fiery Furnaces – core brother-sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger – are well-versed in creating an album that manages to balance melody, originality, and a seemingly endless arsenal of instrumental ideas.
·While the band’s sixth album, ‘Widow City’, is rooted in the Furnaces’ aesthetic of challenging conventional notions of timing and song structure, the record is absolutely unlike any other LP in their expansive and brilliant repertoire.
·Produced by Matthew Friedberger, engineered by Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins, and mixed by John McEntire at Soma Studios in Chicago, ‘Widow City’ includes the band’s first time use of the Chamberlain, a keyboard that triggers tapes loops of other instruments to create its library of sounds. The Chamberlain acts as the sole source of strings, woodwinds and harp sounds found on ‘Widow City’, and, as such, the sounds on the tapes are widows in relation to their long lost ‘husband’ recorded performances, living on and on, dressed in the audio black that is the lack of high end on these analog tapes. ·The songs were inspired in part by advertisements from women’s magazines of the early 70’s, an imagined Ouija board by which Matthew might ascertain what his sister would want him to write about, and the cultural pages of alternative lifestyle weekly papers, or not.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find another album as compelling, beautiful, strange, dense and magical as this one.
Vinyl is a double LP in an old-style tip-on gatefold jacket and includes coupon for free MP3 download of entire album.