Matthew Friedberger of The Fiery Furnaces has a new 2LP out. It’s titled Matricidal Sons of Bitches and it’s as conceptual and voluminous as those familiar with the man might expect. And yet it’s substantially different in execution from what those with only a passing familiarity with his previous work might think. In fact it’s an oft-fascinating excursion into the folds of a unique if polarizing mind, and those drawn to the fringes might want to investigate its rewards.
If forced to sum up the work of Matthew Friedberger in a word, one of the final contenders would be sprawl. Taken individually, nearly all of Friedberger’s stuff released in tandem with his sister Eleanor in the divisive but enduring The Fiery Furnaces and issued more recently under his own name has tended toward the maximal; the records are reliably presented as being far more than a listener can effectively absorb in one or even a few sittings.
But we’re not talking here about the sort of albums that often get described as grower’s, or for that matter the kind of big statements, 2LPs typically, that turn up in the discographies of bands or solo artists to signify a temporary increase in ambition. No, the landscape of Matthew Friedberger’s music can be said to ooze ambitiousness, even from The Fiery Furnace’s earliest days.
For instance, their second and probably most widely appreciated album Blueberry Boat was far from universally accepted. To the contrary, many people couldn’t stand it, and The Fiery Furnaces came to present a polarity of opinion amongst the post-rock field; people tended to either love them or hate them, and as they continued to engage with the conceptual, many of those that once loved them decided to abandon ship.
Ambition doesn’t necessarily equate to the experimental, but it certainly does in Friedberger’s case. What’s more is that he surely possesses a way with pop melody, which when combined with his penchant for the sprawling can inspire many to peg him as his own worst enemy. Unsurprisingly 2006’s Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School received mixed reviews, but a recurring theme in those notices was that the first disc, the pop one Winter Women (though its “summer pop songs” weren’t likely to end up in heavy rotation down at the beach) was the best.
The second, a very loose narrative (sort of a rock-opera that deliberately doesn’t rock) about an American entrepreneur in Asia teaching language for business purposes, resulted in the expected charges of self-indulgence, lack of focus, and even forced kookiness. And yeah, it’s definitely an oddball concept delivered in a manner destined to inspire charges of dilettantism from certain quarters. Friedberger’s aesthetic here lacked roots in academic tradition; his music was instead born from pop, but it revealed a frustration with the form, and at times it registered like a succession of well ordered aural images that was then taken apart and then wildly reassembled; some moments even felt like a studio approximation of tape collage.
Other stuff didn’t sound like that at all. There was also plinking and plonking, a tendency toward stripped down, basic melodies as ambiance, and a good helping of spoken (if somewhat elliptical) elements. Overall, it was a promising solo debut, if understatedly hard to penetrate, and definitely not the record to win over listener’s agnostic to Friedberger’s talents. From there he went on to produce three more albums with the Furnaces (Winter Women/Holy Ghost was reissued with bonus tracks in ’09, providing a glancing inaccuracy to the prolificacy of his own work) and then offered up Solos, an eight album burst of material as a limited edition subscriber series.
As one who didn’t partake in that whole sequence, I can’t offer an accurate description of its overall worth, but what has been heard connected as quite different and more immediate than his prior offering. And if it seemed like maybe Friedberger was closing himself off from the dubious and dealing directly with the converted, well here comes Matricidal Sons of Bitches, a hulking 45-song double album that reinforces the man’s rep as a thorny, demanding, and yes, sprawling musician.
Broken into four titled sections- Ladies-in-Waiting – Waiting Forever, Brand-New Mothers – Trying it Out, Expectant Fathers – In for a Surprise, and Dying on the Sixth Side, its concept is bigger, less defined and more intriguing than that of Holy Ghost Language School, which flirted with a zaniness remindful of a certain strain of contemporary literature; a bit of promo mentioned Haruki Murakami, but I thought of Tom Robbins. This kind of out-there vibe can work excellently on the page, but transferred to the musical realm it’s a far dicier proposition, and it did affect Holy Ghost Language School quality a bit.
Instead, Matricidal Sons of Bitches strives for a blend of the macabre and the playful and trades in the literary vibe for one that’s highly cinematic. This is explicitly detailed in Friedberger’s unusual and pretty entertaining press material for the release, where he details the music as the soundtrack for an imaginary movie, except he’s a bit more artful in his description than that; he mentions Poverty Row, the catch-all term for extremely low-budget films made in Hollywood from the late-‘20s up to the early ‘50s, and how the movie this new record scores couldn’t afford a script, acting or even film to shoot on.
The most famous Poverty Row films tend to be the film-noirs from the ‘40s/50s that went on to influence certain directors in the Nouvelle Vague. And despite exploring the theme of murder (pretty much a noir prerequisite) and opening with a highly effective passage of dark spoken word, Matricidal Sons of Bitches feels much more geared to the movies of the silent era. This connection to pre-synch-sound moving pictures is surely aided by song titles that are possibly intended to signify the blurbs of narrative-advancing written information found on silent film title cards, a circumstance that is enhanced by some of the album’s songs being in quotes, others not.
Friedberger also utilizes the recurring motifs that are familiar to film scoring in general, but here they recall the often quite weird aura of pre-talkie movies, particularly those denied much in the way of production value. For one thing the reappearance of melodies, sometimes melancholy at other points lurid leaves the space of the functional and comes to feel like that of absolute necessity. Matricidal Sons of Bitches does a superb job of communicating the atmosphere of creating on the fly with limited resources and the clock always ticking, a place where the completion of product is the goal and if something artistic surfaces after the fact, well that was just a happy bonus.
So, maybe the better word for what Friedberger’s up to here regarding the atmosphere isn’t communicating but rather approximating, for it becomes clear pretty instantly that he’s eyebrows deep in an artfulness that his stated inspiration most definitely was not. Again, he’s invested in conceiving a great big sprawling thing, whereas the termite-like movie makers that he references were looking to simply shoot a movie as quickly as possible with no fuss with the purpose of turning a buck and then moving on to the next one.
It should be added that Friedberger’s music doesn’t sound deliberately old in nature. Instead it unwinds as a commentary/study of sincere and deep intent with large doses of the man’s own personality flowing throughout the four sections/sides, the record actually sitting in close consort with the contemporary impulse to create modern scores for old films. It’s just that the movie(s) Friedberger is interacting with are located inside his own head. And as Matricidal Sons of Bitches plays, I can’t help but consider it spiritual kin to the retro-modern surrealism of filmmaker Guy Maddin.
There is a lot to digest here (and to be blunt, I’m still working through its charms), and it’s an understatement to say that the recurrence of themes and the preponderance of a dour mood will leave many cold to its offerings. But compared to Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School it’s a great leap forward. There’s not a damn thing wacky here, and for that I’m appreciative. Plus, Friedberger’s pop side is pretty submerged by this concept, and I can’t help thinking that’s maybe for the best. And that sprawl? It’s certainly on display, but unlike Winter Women/Holy Ghost (which to be fair, is packaged as two separate albums released together) it’s easily digestible as a whole, though I’ll add that it’s maybe best absorbed a side at a time.
And those first three sides all feature a nice little curve ball to spice things up. Side one’s “Same Thing Every Night” is a shape-shifting little ditty that’s downright pretty, with plucked harp strings, percussion patterns that almost feel looped, some locomotive keyboard reminiscent of the player-piano and the natty additive of horns. Or horn-like effects; one of the most attractive elements at play here is how it’s not always clear that what’s being heard is a real live instrument, an imitation of such, or even samples.
Side two’s “Zeroing in Across the Crowded Bar” does a fantastic job of advancing the picture painted by its title, with a nice helping of bluesy guitar (and some very strange wordless vocal sampling), side three’s “As if in the Car with the Kids” is in some way similar to the abovementioned track from side one, but it also throws in this borrowed beat that a can’t keep from associating with ‘80s break-dancing. Huh? It’s a perplexing development, but also a positive one. And side four really advances the sonic pilfering, especially “Lying on the Sixth Side.” It’s also the most ragged of the four sections, but that’s only fitting; it’s the climax to the action, after all.
As it continues to grow in my ear, Matricidal Sons of Bitches feels like a rousing success for Matthew Friedberger. Fans of his will no doubt be on it like fleece on sheep. But others shouldn’t hesitate to check it out. For instance, methinks soundtrack fans might just find it to be a welcome addition to their stacks. And not to imply that this sounds like The Residents or their cohorts, but anyone with a long shelf of Ralph Records might want to do some snooping. It does give off a similar outsider sensibility. Time will only tell where Friedberger goes from here, but this album is a fine expression of his expansive talents.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
