The Fiery Furnaces Rehearsing My Choir Rough Trade October 25, 2005

The Fiery Furnaces have always challenged their listeners. Like a neglected stepchild, their music demands attention and consideration. It often takes unexpectedly bipolar turns, toeing the line between harmony and cacophony before turning around and retreating to the realm of intelligibility.

So when the group recently released their fourth full-length, Rehearsing My Choir, it was expected that they would take their reputation for experimentation to a new level. In essence, the album is an hour-long narrative concerning the life of the Friedbergers' grandmother, Olga Sarantos, who lends her unique voice to every track. It is primarily an amalgamation of connected anecdotes, recited rather than sung. Stories include that of a crazy aunt, a doctor moonlighting as a donut maker and a bishop unhealthily obsessed with Robert Mitchum.

Upon first listen, the album seems buried under awkwardly placed synthetic melodies and other electronic accompaniment. It seems like the duo is just trying to flaunt their off-beatness without actually producing anything of recognizable quality or ingenuity. Yet there's always an implicit challenge in The Fiery Furnaces' music. It takes a third or fourth listen for the album's true colors to shine through.

Though heavily poeticized and, at times, hard to follow, Grandma Olga's story entices the listener and pulls him along. Attempting to decipher Olga's smoky, Chicago-accented words and the siblings' alliterative tendencies is both interesting and fun. Each song suggests a unique time and place. With tangible and sensory lyrics, the locales they evoke range from bustling prewar Chicago to the pine forests of Canada.

Unforgettable hooks -- central to the success of the group's past albums -- aren't present on Rehearsing My Choir. Only on a few tracks, including "Slavin' Away" and "4823 22nd Street," exhibit the same kind of catchiness found on previous hits like "Tropical Ice-Land." With their newest release, The Fiery Furnaces have created an album of heavily synthesized and instrumentalized mini-epics that ultimately come together to form something notable. They have once again pushed the limits of convention, proving that they transcend classification.