Hey, It’s Been About a Year… Time for Another Fiery Furnaces Record (And Also for a Good Long Look in the Mirror, Mr. “I’m Going Back to School Soon, I Swear”!)
By Nobodaddy on 04-28-2009
Man, I don’t know about you, but by the time Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger released their EIGHTH album, I kinda thought that I’d be a little further along in life. I still remember skipping down to the record store as a youngster, happening upon an unassuming-yet-generally-rewarding Gallowbird’s Bark by a young Fiery Furnaces in the pop/rock rack, and plunking down some odd change and a few crumpled dollar bills from my paper route to purchase said record on the now-defunct medium of “Compact Disc.” My whole future was ahead of me, there were these guys called “republicans” in Washington, and hamburgers cost 35¢ each at the McDonald’s, which was right next door to this curious old building that said “Washington Mutual” on the front of it. Ahh, those were the salad days, I tell you...
Hey! Wait a minute! That wasn’t 17 years ago... come to think of it, that was only 6 freakin’ years ago when their debut came out! I forgot -- The Fiery Furnaces just tend to put our a record every 10 months or so. And this one, their newest studio effort I’m Going Away, is set to be released July 21 on Thrill Jockey Records. Described as an album of “70’s sunshine-glazed piano pop, filled with cascading note slides, head-nodding grooves and some of the sweetest melodies in their seemingly endless arsenal of musical ideas,” this new effort promises to sound, well, probably mostly like all of their other records; which is to say: nothing like any of their other records?
Um, anyway, the affair was produced by Matthew, with drums and percussion by the returning Robert D’Amico, plus bass and mixing by the returning Jason Loewenstein. As usual, song were written by Friedberger and Friedberger (save for the title track, which is traditional, natch). And hey, since its only 6 years later, we’ve all got some time on our hands before we really need to grow up and get our shit together, after all! I swear, by album #9, I’ll be somebody.
I’m Going Away tracklist:
1. I’m Going Away
2. Drive to Dallas
3. The End is Near
4. Charmaine Champagne
5. Cut the Cake
6. Even in the Rain
7. Staring at the Steeple
8. Ray Bouvier
9. Keep Me in the Dark
10. Lost At Sea
11. Cups and Punches
12. Take Me Round Again
Once Again, J Dilla Posthumously Puts Every Other Hip-Hop Producer to Shame with Jay Stay Paid
By Heidi Vanderslice on 04-28-2009
This one time, I was at a party, right? And there were big, gorgeous hardwood floors in this gigantic house just begging to be danced on, so of course, everyone was outside smoking cigarettes. I decided this would not do, so I threw on a copy of J Dilla's Donuts, and what do you know? Mood lighting appeared, a disco ball descended and began rotating sensuously, and... okay, this is a load of shit, honestly. I really did put on a J Dilla album at a party, and maybe I had a bit of whiskey confidence going on, but I swear on my copy of After the Gold Rush that the entire room relaxed.
Dilla's life was cut short in 2006 at age 32 when he died from lupus-related complications, leaving behind scores of unreleased mixes and material, some of which surfaced in 2008 when his unreleased album for MCA, Pay Jay, was leaked. Luckily, the rest of this treasure trove is in the best hands possible: those of his mother, Maureen Yancey (a.k.a. Ma Dukes). Acting as executive producer, Yancey called on producer/DJ/rapper Pete Rock, Dilla's only real-deal idol, to pull together another collection of unreleased material from the vaults.
Jay Stay Paid runs like a radio show with Rock at the helm, guiding the listener through the brand-new tracks. "It wasn't rushed and it wasn't haphazard," Yancey explains. "This album combines what he did in the beginning of his career, what he did in some of our early hospital stays, which was very deep, and some stuff pulled from old floppy disks & DATs. It's mind blowing... this is like the missing links to Dilla's legacy."
Jay Stay Paid is due June 2 on Nature Sounds, with guest spittin' from Black Thought of The Roots, DOOM, Havoc of Mobb Deep, Pharoahe Monch, Blu, Pacific Division, and M.O.P. Let's hope this is not the last we hear from The Dee.
[Photo: Mpozi Tolbert]
