The Fiery Furnaces have been lauded for their ingenuity and ambitiousness, for breaking the indie rock mold and becoming true sonic adventurers. Conversely, they’ve have been criticized for being too prolific, for producing music too challenging or unfocused or overindulgent for a good sit-down-and-get-to-know-ya.
Darlings or misfits, one thing is certain: The Fiery Furnaces are crafty, inexhaustible artists who may be too inspired for their own good. The core members, brother and sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger (pictured), don’t seem to take any downtime — they’re either touring or creating music or brewing up new and better ways to play, present, record, arrange and engage their fans in their music.
“It’s something we take very seriously, but it’s something we would do anyway, so it makes us want to do it a lot,” Matthew told me by phone a few weeks before their August 22 Tampa stop. “Make records, write songs — you wanna do that as much as possible really, because that’s what you do for fun.”
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.
