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It was a disjointed kind of night. The ICA isn’t the easiest of venues to find, especially when it’s dark and raining hard. It isn’t the most professional of set-ups either, which made recording this gig for a later airing on Radio 3 somewhat of a farce. But we get ahead of ourselves. The ICA is near Buckingham Palace, which despite being a big stately home, isn’t that easy to reach. But the extended period of time spent getting soaked in St James Park was, as it turns out, the lesser of two evils early that evening, the greater being the support act Kevin Bletcham. The end of this post modernist band’s set, at least, was terrible. Reports that the first half was slightly more coherent were circulating in the crowd but at the end of the day anyone singing that loudly and that theatrically doesn’t deserve any kind of acclaim. For the Fiery Furnaces though, acclaim is not in short supply. Probably the most exciting band to grace our shores for a long time, an evening with the Fiery Furnaces will always command great anticipation. Their discography boasts a storming debut, a rock opera and a bunch of B-sides, soon to be followed by the latest album about the life of their Gran. And live they take it all little bit further. If only the ICA knew who the hell they had booked before coming over all self important with the radio broadcast, then perhaps their shoddy treatment of the band, culminating in bringing up the house lights half way through the encore – halfway through the actual song – may have been an embarrassment they could have avoided. But sadly the script was already written, probably by the same person who decided to give Kevin Bletcham an hour and a half in which to abuse the crowd with their mentalist warblings. So when they finally came on it seemed as though the main act had only a very limited time to do their thing. This became more obvious as they sped through hard, bass heavy rock versions of some first album gems such as ‘Up in the North’ and ‘Crystal Clear’. Mid-set they switched tempos to play their new stuff, material so new, so progressive and so difficult to assimilate that not even singer Eleanor Friedberger could perform without her lyric book in front of her and a spot light trained on it (the source, incidentally, of particular difficulty for the aforementioned ‘professionals’ at the ICA). After battling through their new material they dutifully finished the set and walked off stage literally for as long as it took to turn right round and come back on again, such was the clearly enforced time limit. In past performances the encore has been an opportunity for brother and sister to come on and do some duets, but alas, as we have already seen, this was not to be. The final joint of the night was dissed and not even the crowd’s vocal protestations could fix it. If any criticism for the far from satisfactory evening could be levelled at the band themselves, it would most likely be their own artistic temperament that seem to be taking them off the rock motorway to the service station of self indulgence. At times Matthew Fiedberger’s fairground keyboards were frankly annoying and you wished he’d just stick to his own distinctive style of guitar playing. Long ramblings amidst nonsensical verse and barely distinguishable choruses can work as entertainment, but really only in the studio. Whether or not it translates to a live setting is something that the duo probably need to think about. But not as much as they need to think about getting themselves a new tour manager. words: Robin Harris |