eMusic

Start Your Trial

Bitter Tea

by

The Fiery Furnaces

 
Bitter Tea
view larger image View Larger

Rate it!

Avg: 4.0 (132 ratings)

Weirdo pop from Brooklyn that wraps its many parts around a chewy center.

  • We Say...

    Review by Michaelangelo Matos

    Before the release of Bitter Tea, their fifth album since 2003, Fiery Furnaces songwriter/arranger/producer/multi-instrumentalist Matthew Friedberger claimed it would be straighter and less convoluted than 2004's Blueberry Boat and 2005's Rehearsing My Choir, and he's sort of right. Which isn't to say that Bitter Tea is any less free-floating than those two discs, on which the Furnaces sealed their cult by bringing into hyperreal focus a habit of writing eight song-sections where most bands would stop once they've come up with a verse, chorus, and bridge.

    This time around, the Friedbergers (Matt and sister/vocalist Eleanor) do the same kind of thing, though in a far less jarring way. You might even call it friendly, in its kooky way. It helps that the parts all sound like they belong in the same place even when they're entirely dissimilar from each other. The opening track, "In My Little Thatched Hut," alternates between a groove reminiscent of an interstitial segment from an early-'70s Children's Television Workshop program, a hushed acoustic-folkie strum, and a Tarzan-ready drum tattoo overlaid with space synths, as if the Friedbergers had come up with three separate arrangements and decided to use them all. Even on a relatively straightforward tune like the pensive "I'm Waiting to Know You," they can't resist fracturing straightforward phrases: "I'm standing guard, the navy yard, to see/Could there one for me be?"

    All of this is as willful as its description sounds. But between Eleanor's voice, which is so good at conveying blunt power even at moderate volume that you might not immediately notice how flexibly it adapts to whatever fripperies surround it, and the tunes Matthew gives her to sing, as chewy as the stuff surrounding them is knotty ("I'm in No Mood" and "I'm Waiting to Know You" work themselves into your head almost surreptitiously), more often than not, even the difficult stuff sticks.

  • They Say...

    Review by Heather Phares, All Music Guide

    Initially intended to be the companion piece to their 2005 epic Rehearsing My Choir -- aka "the grandmother album" -- the Fiery Furnaces' Bitter Tea arrived half a year later and on a new label for the band, Fat Possum (where, presumably, the Friedbergers will keep company with the Black Keys as the blues imprint's fledgling indie rock colony). Conceived as a more youthful album of lovelorn songs to go along with Choir's voice of maturity, Bitter Tea is slightly less complicated than its would-be companion album; in fact, it features some of the band's catchiest songs since EP. "I'm Waiting to Know You" turns a moony, '50s-style ballad into slow-dance synth pop, while "Police Sweater Blood Vow" is warm, playful, and even a little sexy, and as straightforward as any song with "Vibrate buzz buzz ring and beep" as part of its chorus can be. However, this is a Fiery Furnaces album, and lest things get too poppy, some of Bitter Tea's best songs are shot through with lengthy passages of burbling synths. Both "Benton Harbor Blues," which features gorgeous vocals, a Motown-inspired bassline, and emotional but not overly sentimental lyrics, and "Teach Me Sweetheart," which could easily be a yearning power ballad along the lines of Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps" in the hands of a more commercially minded band, both feel like thwarted pop singles. Of course, part of the Fiery Furnaces' appeal from the beginning has been the way they screw with what could be very simple, almost ditty-like songs. However, on Bitter Tea the ways that they mess with their music aren't always as intriguing or memorable as what the songs could've been like if they were eccentric yet concise in the way that, say, Gallowsbird's Bark was. At times, the album feels oddly diluted, neither as strikingly experimental as Blueberry Boat or Rehearsing My Choir, nor as brilliantly catchy as their debut. And at 72 minutes, Bitter Tea is too long; the stories that it tells just aren't big enough to fill up all that space. Still this is a Fiery Furnaces album, and even if all the songs aren't uniformly great, there's something interesting about each of them: "I'm in No Mood" sounds a little like a fractured version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" performed by a haywire player piano; "Oh Sweet Woods" moves from a thumping dance beat to flowing acoustic guitars, then nods to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"; and, with its Asian-inspired melody, "Bitter Tea" itself is one of the more rambling, suite-like songs that works. Bitter Tea does indeed work well as a companion piece to Rehearsing My Choir, as well. The refrain of "once upon a time" in "Nevers" mirrors Choir's "Remember Then?," and "The Vietnamese Telephone Ministry" is a spooky, cryptic recitation of places and addresses along the lines of "Seven Silver Curses." Meanwhile, the backward vocals and instrumentation that make up one of Bitter Tea's main motifs could convey looking back on youth or rewinding time -- or they could be there just because they sound really trippy. Anyone who enjoyed having their brains and ears rearranged by Blueberry Boat and Rehearsing My Choir should find Bitter Tea enjoyable, but at this point, it seems like the most challenging thing the Fiery Furnaces could do is trust their pop instincts a little more often.

  • You Say...

    I would like to say...

    Artist: The Fiery Furnaces

    Album: Bitter Tea

    Review Title: (maximum 50 characters)

    Your Review: (maximum 1,000 characters)

    Cancel

    Please keep your comments to the recordings themselves, and be courteous and respectful. Thanks! For further info, read our Community Guidelines.

    Write a Review

“ The indie iTunes — Hardcore music fans are migrating to eMusic, the iTunes Music Store's cheaper, cooler cousin.”


Rolling Stone
Start Your Trial

© 1998-2008 eMusic.com Inc. eMusic and the eMusic logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks in the USA or other countries. All rights reserved.

All Music Guide © 1992 - 2008 All Media Guide, LLC
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC

YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia® are registered trademarks of their respective owners, Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Neither Google, Inc., Yahoo! Inc. nor Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. are partners or sponsors of eMusic. eMusic uses the Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia API but is not endorsed or certified by Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia. eMusic does not pre-screen, monitor, endorse nor assume any liability for websites, contents, products, services or claims made by YouTube, Flickr™ and Wikipedia®.

Legal or copyright question regarding YouTube, Flickr or Wikipedia content on eMusic? Please email us.