Skip to content

Last Summer

  • Merge

The Fiery Furnaces singer's solo debut feels like a throwback to idiosyncratic, solidly crafted singer-songwriter LPs from the 1970s.

The Fiery Furnaces' 2003 debut album, Gallowsbird's Bark, introduced a band that was utterly, irresistibly restless, from its frequent stylistic and tempo shifts to the ceaselessly discursive patter of frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger. This M.O. of ambitious itchiness was one Eleanor and her brother Matthew would only intensify with albums to come, including the sprawling landmark Blueberry Boat, the conceptually brave family affair Rehearsing My Choir, and the Frankensteinian live document Remember.

But a funny thing happened with the female Friedberger on the Furnaces' manifold zigzagging journeys from point A to point Z. Instead of just yelping or intoning strings of verbiage, Eleanor started to inform her delivery with nuance, irony, and wisdom. By 2007's terrific Widow City, the precocious hepcat of the group's early efforts was achieving real pathos on songs like "My Egyptian Grammar". The maturation deepened with 2009's I'm Going Away, which found Friedberger not only displaying increased subtlety as a singer but also taking a greater hand in crafting lyrics and melodies. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the Furnaces' most polished and measured work to date.

Friedberger's debut solo album thoroughly carries over this relatively nascent understanding of her as an artist who can deliver sturdily professional, affecting pop. In fact, Last Summer practically makes I'm Going Away sound like one of the Furnaces' more madcap offerings by comparison. Simple but lovely piano melodies and richly mellow bass shepherd most of the tracks here, though Friedberger has paid lots of attention to filling the album's ample breathing spaces with guitar fills and percussive coloring. The warmly recorded, light-treading effort feels like a throwback to idiosyncratic but solidly crafted albums made in the 1970s by piano-driven popsmiths like Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, and Joni Mitchell.

"Idiosyncratic" is an important qualifier. The success of Last Summer hinges on Friedberger's ability to put across a vocal and lyrical persona that excuses the fact that her tunes, while finely wrought, are hardly groundbreaking. As a vocalist she ably blends tough-minded forthrightness with a capacity for empathy and vulnerability. That's part of the reason why she can flirt overtly with girl-group sounds ("Heaven"), Motown ("I Won't Fall Apart on You Tonight"), and funk ("Roosevelt Island") without seeming like an empty-vessel revivalist. It's what really good artists do-- they get away with occasional genre exercise and pastiche because the force of their own personality overrides any potential slavishness in the songwriting.

Nor has Friedberger sacrificed any of the serpentine panache of her lyrics. The strict sense of her stories may not always be easy to parse, but their logical slipperiness only strengthens the shifting feelings of longing, loss, estrangement, or nostalgia they convey. Friedberger keeps to the Furnaces' longstanding preoccupation with geography but narrows her scope in a way that heightens the album's sense of intimacy. Aside from "Inn of the Seventh Ray", which refers to an acclaimed California locale, Last Summer is all about New York, particularly Brooklyn. But Friedberger isn't interested in name-dropping Williamsburg's hippest bars, preferring to mention old neighborhoods and recreational attractions. Especially given the album's general 70s vibe, Last Summer feels much more like one of Woody Allen's classic cinematic love letters to the Big Apple than the work of any 21st-century scenester. From an artist whose mind and appetites have always ranged so freely, such a cohesive, uncluttered document is doubly revealing.

Back to home