All writing about Eleanor Friedberger’s debut solo album Last Summer must expound on this most basic fact: It’s not a Fiery Furnaces album. The famous band that she fronts with her brother Matthew is on hiatus while each sibling ventures off to work on solo projects. The interesting thing to note is how the nature of their latest undertakings highlights their disparate musical personalities – a head and heart variance that converges to form the knotty, sprawling, and yet pop essence of the Fiery Furnaces. Matthew, the technically oriented mastermind of the band, is working on a series of seven LPs that feature him playing a different instrument solo on each record. Eleanor, on the other hand, made a pop record.
On Last Summer, Friedberger presents a set of songs written about her summer of 2010. In perfect pop form, the songs veer lyrically between specific and vague images that come to comprise time-specific memories when viewed as a whole. A subway ride to Coney Island to find bicycle parts, a photograph posing next to a white Lamborghini, timeworn feelings from a summer in California. These are some of the places that Friedberger takes us to on Last Summer. In this fragmented way, the album begins to remind us of the nature of our own nostalgia. The way memories form out of a weary recollection of time, vivid bursts of sensation, and a malleable sense for the way things felt when they were actually happening.
Friedberger’s songs often become lyrically dense, and her deadpan delivery recalls Patti Smith or even Joni Mitchell, with less dynamic range but no less personality. The album sonically locates itself in the 1970s, with a warm studio vibe that glides from Motown to funk to piano-driven classic rock with rich mellow-gold saxophone. While the feeling of the music on the album is breezy and straight forward (no backwards guitar loops or Grandma cameos on this one), its strength lies in Friedberger’s well-crafted lyrics that pace the record through time and place from start to finish.
She took the stage of the Doug Fir’s outdoor patio without a band on Sunday afternoon. Under the hot, late afternoon sun, Friedberger seemed slightly bored standing lonesome with her dark green semi-hollow body guitar. Amidst heavy patio chatter, she started the set unassumingly with “My Mistakes,” and the audience soon quieted to a respectful din. While Friedberger isn’t an especially skilled guitarist, she made up for her mild accompaniment with her confident vocal delivery and lyrical prowess. I heard the words more clearly than I ever experienced listening to the record in headphones. In the song “Roosevelt Island,” she sang, “it doesn’t seem like anything could be better than that, riding that train…” In that bare vulnerable setting, especially in the context of the Portland summer day, her memory’s affect was vivid and moving.
Friedberger was joined several times throughout her set by "Saturday Night Live" and "Portlandia" star Fred Armisen. For some odd unexplainable reason, it didn’t seem so surprising, and the audience’s reaction didn’t peak beyond a few overt camera phone shooters. In terms of the music, although Armisen’s drumming was pretty basic (and I think this was the first time they had ever played together), it still hinted at how good it could be seeing her perform these songs in a full band setting. I missed the piano melodies and saxophone chirps in many moments of her set. And if anything, Friedberger’s on-stage enthusiasm definitely peaked in the moments where she wasn’t up there alone. For instance, in “Place to Be,” with Armisen on the drum kit, her guitar strumming picked up to a slightly less frantic Ted Leo pace.
At one point in the show, she asked for requests from the audience and ended up playing the Fiery Furnaces’ “Don’t Dance Her Down.” It was the weakest part of the show, if not also the most frank in its bareness. In this moment, it was clear that her mind was far from the songs of her other band. Several other audience members yelled out Fiery Furnaces requests and she couldn’t remember how to play those songs.
Rather, even standing solo, it was nice to see Friedberger invested in the songs of Last Summer. It made me excited to see what happens when she brings a full band to Portland for MusicFest in September. Now that I’ve heard the words so distinctly, I’m ready to hear the record performed to its real potential--to see the heart of the Fiery Furnaces play to its fullest.
