The first song on
Widow City, "Philadelphia Grand Jury" -- all seven minutes of it -- defines everything fascinating, and occasionally frustrating, about
the Fiery Furnaces' music.
Eleanor Friedberger sings about legal woes, red tape, and conspiracies as the music behind her switches from tinkling piano and harp to anthemic guitars and back again, then drifts off into its own noodly world. Likewise,
Widow City is a quintessentially
Fiery Furnaces album, recombining the Friedburgers' hyper-literate art rock and experimental almost-pop: "Japanese Slippers" plays a bit like one of
Gallowsbird's Bark's saloon ditties filtered through
Blueberry Boat's kaleidoscope. However,
Widow City's major accomplishment is how it captures the band's live power and sheds some of their mannered studio sound. It rocks hard, and often: in-the-red drums and guitars dominate "Wicker Whatnots," where they collide with violins and lyrics about animal sacrifices and meterological conditions, and the thrashy "Uncle Charlie," which opens with a lengthy -- and crazed -- drum solo, then threatens to collapse for its entire two minutes. There's also a strong classic rock influence on the album; "Duplexes of the Dead"'s melody sounds more than a little like the chorus of
the Rolling Stones' "Child of the Moon," and "Navy Nurse"'s funky, behemoth riff could be from
Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein."