Heating up Pitt’s music scene

While many musicians are lucky to pack six or seven solid, catchy hooks into one album, Matt… While many musicians are lucky to pack six or seven solid, catchy hooks into one album, Matt Friedberger manages that many…per song.

As the main songwriter, co-vocalist and instrumentalist for indie-electronic-folk freakout band The Fiery Furnaces, which he fronts along with his sister, Eleanor, Friedberger’s art is like classical music — except that each movement is not another section of a symphony but a new shard of a pop song.

“Well, everything is so similar in rock music,” Friedberger explained to The Pitt News in a recent interview. “We string lots of songs together into one so it doesn’t sound the same.”

Sound complicated? It is.

Since The Fiery Furnaces arrived on the independent music scene out of New York, following the Friedberger silblings’ move to Brooklyn, the band has been one of the most misunderstood — and most respected — acts around.

Tomorrow night, at Mr. Small’s Theatre in Millvale, The Fiery Furnaces will take the stage supporting its latest album, Bitter Tea. And there’s not another show on earth that will have you scratching your head in confusion while still nodding in approval like this one.

Matt and Eleanor Friedberger grew up in a musical household: Their grandmother was a church choir director and music was constantly pulsing through their residence — from Gilbert and Sullivan show tunes, to family sing-alongs, to tunes from bands like Queen and Elton John.

Needless to say, these kids had more influences than they knew what to do with.

After Matt paid his dues in the music scene, albeit not successfully, Eleanor decided she was finally ready to share the spotlight with him.

“At 25 or 26, she felt confident to play in front of people and she recruited me. It was her idea to form a band,” said Matt. “I’d always played in crappy bands, so I was an obvious person to recruit.”

It was then that these two minds began melding to form something completely new. The Fiery Furnaces’ debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark, was a step in a weird direction, but Blueberry Boat, the band’s sophomore effort, saw the Friedbergers exploring their inner schizophrenics. Blueberry Boat features 12 tracks, a third of which are more than eight minutes long, each with more musical ideas than the listener will care to count.

For example, “Chris Michael” begins with the sprightly repetition of a piano-guitar-drum flare-up that sounds like The Who, then transforms into an angry, acoustic-folk song with noodling blues guitar roving in the background, then becomes a Saturday morning cartoon-esque theme song, and finally jumps back and forth between a dreamy, ’60s pop ballad and what sounds like an outtake from the original “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Whew, that’s a mouthful.

Now, as much as Matt sounds like he should be a “too-hip-for-you rocker,” as he’s able to write songs as complex as your next O. Chem exam, he’s anything but. In fact, during his interview with The Pitt News, which he gave from his Brooklyn apartment, Friedberger seemed to have very little pretentiousness at all — in fact, he doesn’t seem to have strong opinions on, well, much of anything. The man is caught up in his own musical-twilight world, which he talks about with childish wonder.

“I don’t write anything personal,” he said. “The subject matter isn’t as good when you write about yourself. I mean, if you’re actually going to write about your divorce or when your baby died, maybe that’s interesting therapy…but I don’t get it. It’s not fun to write about yourself.”

Friedberger isn’t lying.

Blueberry Boat features a tune called “My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found” about kicking his dog and watching it run away, then conducting a search with police to find the mutt, which ends with the clever line, “I went to the church that Wednesday night/The guest preacher said, ‘I bark but I don’t bite’/I saw my dog, but he’d seen the light/My dog was lost but now he’s found.” And Matt Frieberger, though he wants one in order to watch it “chase rabbits around the park,” doesn’t own a dog.

Nonetheless, all this nonsense has certainly won The Fiery Furnaces the attention of indie-rock fans all over the country, as have its tours with Franz Ferdinand and The Shins. And when indie kids listen, reviewers will follow. Friedberger is as frank about the media as he is about his writing.

“Sometimes I agree with bad reviews more than I do with good reviews. I mean, sometimes a good review will like the record, but the writer didn’t get the record the way you listen to it, so you associate more with the bad review. That’s the fun thing — putting out records and getting all sorts of reactions,” he said.

Fortunately — or unfortunately, as it were — for the band, bad reviews don’t come too often. The Fiery Furnaces have been lumped in with other critically acclaimed, unclassifiable rock outfits, much to Matt’s dismay.

“My sister and I don’t like music with, like, seven girls in boy scout uniforms playing the kazoo and viola and some guy playing the banjo and singing real softly. We play rock music — that’s it,” he said.

While most people don’t see the band so simplistically, Friedberger really just wants to have fun.

As our talk veered toward Pittsburgh — Friedberger was accepted into the University with a scholarship, but not one large enough that he could afford the cost of school — he revealed his excitement for Friday’s show.

“The show will be a big dance party. I mean, I don’t know if anyone will dance, but we’re going to play our tropically inclined arrangements of the songs, with wa-wa guitar pedals…and congas.”

Now who knows if he’s telling the truth, but I don’t think music fans can afford not to find out.