The Fiery Furnaces have a reputation for inscrutability. Sometimes it’s been well-earned: Anybody who chooses to fight into the Furnaces’ dense thicket of proper nouns, cultural associations and juxtapositions had best be prepared for a bit of bewilderment. But usually, those who call the band impenetrable or even difficult are being downright lazy. Eleanor Friedberger’s girl-genius storytelling is usually linear — it’s just that the lines can be long and tangled, and following them can take listeners to precincts rarely visited. And since she can stuff twice as many syllables into a line than the average rapper can without losing her impeccable sense of meter, she’s bound to provide far more detail than pop listeners are accustomed to hearing.
In the Furnaces, Friedberger’s authorship has sometimes been eclipsed by that of her more protean (and equally talented) brother Matthew. Furnace-ologists have noticed, however, that Eleanor’s name has ended up on the group’s most emotionally forthright material: “Benton Harbor Blues,” for instance, a lovelorn, down-and-out cityscape from the underrated “Bitter Tea” album. “Last Summer,” her first solo album, is a wordy delight, and a trip to a place not unlike Friedberger’s Benton Harbor.
The album is a Brooklyn travelogue, narrated by an ingenue enchanted by the borough’s peculiar rhythms. Friedberger gives us a 2010 date for her reveries, but much about “Last Summer” suggests the placid, wide-open, slightly aimless summertime atmosphere of pre-9/11 New York. And because Friedberger is such a scrupulous observer of the tiny details of city living, she makes the quotidian feel consequential. Her Brooklyn tapestry is not choked with night life and glamour, but with Coney Island bike shops, abandoned trains and rain-soaked, out-of-the-way parks.
“Last Summer” is a tale of the outskirts, told by a narrator who hasn’t worked her way into the heart of the city and is pretty sure she doesn’t need to in order to have a rich and meaningful experience. It’s reminiscent of those great Brooklyn stories — like Betty Smith’s, or Meredith Gran’s webcomic “Octopus Pie” — that get at the detachment and mystery of life lived on the periphery of the biggest city in the nation.
The music, while not as experimental as Friedberger’s work with the Fiery Furnaces, still takes plenty of chances. Fans of the prog-rock sound of the Furnaces’ 2007 release “Widow City” will love “Inn of the Seventh Ray,” which features several vocal echoes splattering all over the track like ice cream dropped on hot pavement; and “Owl’s Head Park,” which takes a long, slightly unnerved walk through the mist on a twisted path.
But the album also showcases Friedberger’s classic piano-pop predilections. “I Won’t Fall Apart on You Tonight” and “Roosevelt Island” — which sports a funky clavinova part — echo “Tusk”-era Fleetwood Mac. “My Mistakes,” the lead single, is pure two-chord synthpop buzz. It contains an opening line that could be Friedberger’s mission statement: “You know I do my best thinking when I’m flying down the bridge.”
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