Super Furry Animals, The Fiery Furnaces at 9:30 Club
Some bands can learn a lot from the Super Furry Animals. You could enlist an army of keyboards or even one of the guys from Sebadoh to improve your live performance, but sometimes all it takes is getting the audience to wiggle their fingers above their heads and howl to have a good time. Last night at the 9:30 Club, the Furries managed to coax the audience into this bizarre display not once, but twice.
The Welsh rock/pop band were the draw of the night, with The Fiery Furnaces and the deceptively named Holy F*ck opening. If you're going to name your band Holy F*ck, you pretty much have to play over-the-top punk or engage in wacky, self-destructive onstage antics. Not so much. Holy F*ck consisted of two keyboardists, who were mostly hunched over their gadgets, twiddling knobs, and a bassist and drummer. Every song was an extended jam, although sometimes there was call-and-response chanting courtesy of the keyboardists' distorted vocals. It's the type of music that's fine for a video game or a movie soundtrack, but tends to wear thin in a live setting.
Photos by Kyle Gustafson.
Brooklyn-based The Fiery Furnaces, which consists of brother and sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger and backing band, were a slight improvement. They've been hot ever since the 2004 release of Blueberry Boat, but their performance style appears to be "throw a bunch of ideas out there and don't worry if they stick." The band was energetic, but at times the set was impossible to sit through. While songs like "The Philadelphia Grand Jury", off 2007's Widow City, were fun and easy to follow, most were a mash up of different compositions with no discernible beginning or end. On top of that, vocalist Eleanor Friedberger used the same delivery throughout each song — a combination of Chrissie Hynde-style shouting and spoken word — which maintained the same sense of urgency throughout the entire performance, but offered no surprises. The best part of the set was watching Sebadoh multi-instrumentalist Jason Lowenstein on bass and Bob D'Amico on drums. Lacking a guitarist, Lowenstein pulled off some great solos with his four-string, all while keeping in step with D'Amico. The rhythm section was so impressive that Matthew Friedberger's playfully simplistic keyboard work felt strangely out of place.
When the Furries took the stage, we were relieved. The band has a reputation for fantastic live performances, and they did not disappoint. We were expecting Sasquatch costumes or general wackiness, but singer Gruff Rhys and crew came out decked in normal attire and immediately broke into "The Gateway Song" and "Runaway", the first two tracks off 2007's Hey Venus!. For the most part, the live songs mirrored the recordings, but it was interesting to see how the band pulled them off, including a recreation of Paul McCartney munching on celery for "Receptacle for the Respectable". The bulk of the setlist focused on Hey Venus!, but the band played a surprising number of tracks from 2001's Rings Around the World and 2002's Phantom Power. The spacey "Zoom!" was the only offering from the more recent Love Kraft. It's worth noting that Super Furry Animals was the only band of the night to feature guitars with more than four strings. Like we said before, they didn't vary their playing from the recordings too much, but it was great to hear the crunch behind the chorus in "Golden Retriever" or the lead guitar wailing over the intro of evening closer "Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy."
Setlist:
The Gateway Song
Runaway
Golden Retriever
Do or Die
She's Got Spies
Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir
Neo Consumer
Battersea Odyssey
Zoom!
The Gift that Keeps Giving
Earth
Juxtaposed With U
Into The Night
Show Your Hand
Receptacle for the Respectable
(Encore)
Slow Life
Rings Around the World
Baby Ate my Eightball
Calimero
Earth 2
Hello Sunshine
Man Don't Give a Fuck
Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy