It all sounded the same during an early Fiery Furnaces show at Southpaw, but I can’t say it wasn’t intended to, and not that any of it wasn’t good. Two sets of keyboards laid the foundation for the jams, and Eleanor Friedberger sang coolly with radiant eyes, whether the topic was a lost dog, husbands, or sons of bitches. Stories after stories her voice never faltered, while the cut of her face to the jerks of her movement all matched the aesthetic of the music. She cannot not be the face of the sound, an incarnation of a summer at least four decades old. Her brother Matthew warmed the stage with grinding keys, goofy smiles, forgotten lyrics and an ocassional cheer for Kyle Hollingsworth from String Cheese Incident who took on the second set of keys. While he and the drummer took a beer break backstage, Eleanor played drums while Mathew sang with missing lyrics.
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Studio recordings of Bill Callahan, including those released under the alias Smog, make it clear that the main offering here is a memorable voice that promises to tell a story. His belongs to that family of voices which has a confident air of the old without actually having encountered it in the past long before it or in the aging that awaits in the future. So this much was to be expected from the show at Southpaw, and this much was held mostly true. There was a part of the audience that had understood this and come there expecting to be mesmerized, but there was the rest given to chattering. Consequently, from what I could tell, out of the voices of two girls talking loudly during a song came a series of “shut up” and “shhh”, and the next thing you know, someone had inevitably been punched by someone else. The band did not stop, but later Bill walked to the front of the stage to ask vaguely, but privately, if people were okay.
More after the jump.
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