Ty Segall, Ætheria Conscientia, and Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp

This week I have new releases from Ty Segall, Ætheria Conscientia, and Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Hell, with a band name that long I don’t have much time for an intro. OH WELL!

Ty Segall – Harmonizer
(August 3, 2021)

Ty Segall - Harmonizer

Ty Segall is a cool, down to earth kind of dude. Every picture of him looks like he’s a friend of my little brother, and that’s saying something considering a) he’s four months older than I am, and b) I don’t even have a little brother!

All of his albums up to Sleeper share this very raw, “just record it and release it” vibe that I hadn’t heard much from Segall ever since. Beginning around about 2014, Segall has strayed consciously onto more sophisticated and more experimental songwriting avenues (2018’s Freedom’s Goblin is one of my favorite albums of the decade). In my stupid, unneeded opinion, Harmonizer shows some backtracking to his roots, and that’s not a bad thing whatsoever. Like every other artist in 2021, Segall’s recent stripped-down songwriting decisions were driven by pandemic lockdown.

With Harmonizer, Segall’s guitar playing is back to the forefront. The glossy, crunchy hi-fi production is matched perfectly with blaring lights and Segall’s frowny puss on the album art; this album feels simultaneously flashy and reserved. Like all the tracks were recorded in a soundproof, well-equipped studio in the basement of a hopping, dingy club away from where the action is. Replete with synthy buzzing, throbbing bass, and Segall’s patented John Lennon-impression vocals, this 35-minute thing is fun from beginning to end. Nothing particularly cathartic and life-changing, but I have zero complaints.

I could wax poetic about Ty Segall’s musicianship for pages and pages, and I might some day, but now is not the time for that. Don’t tempt me.

Early Verdict:

Ætheria Conscientia – Corrupted Pillars of Vanity
(April 9, 2021)

Ætheria Conscientia - Corrupted Pillars of Vanity

I gave this album the Metallurgical Evaluation treatment earlier in the year, but my OCD and my desire to pad out this post by, essentially, rewriting what I’ve already written reigns supreme!

Ætheria Conscientia is an atmospheric black metal band with a strong sci-fi theme, as evident by their album cover that shows some sort of ancient glowing robot bird or something. Corrupted Pillars of Vanity straddle the fence between metal, jazz, and prog (it’s a three-way fence!), weaving plenty of saxophone in between long, throaty passages of sludge metal scream over layered riffs. Lots of Neurosis influence is here, alternating slow acoustic prettiness with giant concrete blocks of soul-crushingly heavy and morose extreme metal. Don’t forget the 10+-minute track lengths. There’s also a fair amount of tribal drumming, which is never a bad thing to my ears!

My initial gripes with their project still stand months later: the sci-fi influence isn’t very obvious in their music. Usually such bands will incorporate otherworldly synths, robotic vocal effects, washes of industrial noise, or even some psychedelia. There’s none of that on Corrupted Pillars of Vanity. It’s an album very much grounded on Earth, not whirling through outer space.

Still, though, I like unique sludge/doom/atmoblack (whatever you want to call this), and the liberal use of the saxophone makes Ætheria Conscientia’s second studio effort stand out among the landfill full to the brim with this kind of heavy metal. Any fan of this sound will be more than pleased.

Early Verdict:

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp – We’re OK. But we’re lost anyway.
(July 2, 2021)

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp - We're OK. But we're lost anyway.

I am always, always, ALWAYS interested in adding to my personal knowledge of bands that sound like out-of-control, demented marching bands playing an intriguing mix of everything you could think of (sidenote: check out a band called Perhaps Contraption). Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. The Almighty Marcel Duchamp Orchestra.

I’ve already sung my praises of the debut albums by Dry Cleaning and Black Country, New Road. Between Dry Cleaning’s dry female vocals, and Black Country, New Road’s colorful instrumental palette, I think OTPMD’s fifth full-length meets somewhere in the middle. At any given moment of their slightly mysterious existence, the European collective contains between 6 and 18 musicians playing, obviously, all the instruments that any given member knows how to play. And then some more!

This music is right up my fucking alley. OTPMD weaves a seamless tapestry of post-punk, worldbeat, noise, krautrock, free jazz, surf rock, dance music, big band, and keeps it cohesive! That’s the important part! Any avant-prog band can throw a bucket of genres into a blender and call it good, but I sense an honest effort on OTPMD’s end to make the whole greater than just the sum of its parts. AND, lots of disparate music that I have heard my whole life gets dredged up from my memory banks while listening to this. The rhythmic marimba brings to my mind Adrian Belew-style worldbeat and PS1 Crash Bandicoot games! Backing vocals sound like Fela Kuti’s chorus singers. Funky, tense beats bring to mind early-mid ’80s-era Talking Heads. Intense, slow-building momentum sounds like ’10s-era Swans. It’s giant pot of delicious art school stew, which sounds gross in a sentence like that, but I assure you that it’s quite fantastic and sublime.

My personal favorite track is “So Many Things (To Feel Guilty About)” where the spoken-word bridge by one of their vocalists (hard to find concrete information about specific personnel for this album) is merely a laundry list of things that people get mad a women about (“…for being too demanding, for being too assertive, for being needy and greedy, for criticizing, for being a pushover, for being British, for working too hard, for being too busy…”). During this extended bridge the music behind it keeps building and building into a fever pitch! I love that shit.

Fun, captivating stuff! I’m going to check out all their other albums post haste. You do the same.

Early Verdict:


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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7 – “Secret Identity”

* Part 7 of 7 of the Power and Responsibility storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7 – “Secret Identity”! In the previous installment, the Green Goblin showed up! We don’t know his name yet though. Nothing else happened. Oh wait, this universe’s Peter Parker uses glue for his webs instead of, you know, making it from his body. Spider-Man, therefore, is strong and can climb walls and that’s it. Not very spidery if you ask me.

This issue marks the finale of the Power and Responsibility story arc! What will we learn? What will I learn? What will YOU learn? Don’t forget Uncle Ben’s last words to Peter before he was murdered: “Bring me the remote control”. Onward!

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7 [May, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Secret Identity”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7

We return to the scene in the sky! Goblin-Man is holding Spider-Man in a loving embrace as they both barrel into the heavens! “PPPPPPRRRKKKEERRR…” the goblin says, moistly, and drops Spider-Man from 30,000 feet above the ground. Spider-Man shits his dumb little pants, but then tries to squirt some web juice between two adjacent buildings to fashion a trampoline net thing! Upon seeing this, the goblin acknowledges with a mighty, confident “HRRUUUGGHH”. Spider-Man, still shitting his pants mind you, starts launching web strings against other buildings to create some makeshift swinging vines à la Atari’s Pitfall. He eventually gets back up to where Mr. Goblin is just chilling and he kicks him right in the back with his spindly little twig leg. He throws more quips at him as he punches him right in his goblin face with a satisfying, uh, “BONK”. Goblin grabs him and throws him to the concrete below like the Peter Parker twerp he is. “All right! That’s it,” says our menacing hero, “time to break it out on you like Chow Yung Fat!” Maybe he should break it out like Chow Yun-fat instead, since that’s actually his name? Oh well, too late now! He shoots some webs but misses his mark and hits a police helicopter canopy. Man, this is taking too long. Time to throw in a picture.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7

You can toss my salad next, Spider Boy.

OK, back to the action. Now the police helicopter is in the fray. Goblin mounts the helicopter like some sort of, uhm, like, Goblin gargoyle? Sorry, I’m typing this at 11pm and half this comic book has been one big action scene. Meanwhile, Spider-Man latched onto Goblin’s cape with some web spooge and is getting whipped around like the family pig! Whatever that means! The helicopter now has backup and demands the Goblin to stand down. “Better get my Spider-Butt back in the game. Those cops don’t know what they’re dealing with.” says Spider-Man importantly, like he fucking knows anything either. The police, again, instruct Goblin to stand down. The Goblin is under arrest and will now go to Goblin jail. Goblin’s getting upset! He starts revving up his fireball hands. Spider-Man is getting desperate and tries reasoning with Goblin face-to-face, tête-à-tête, mano a mano. UUGGHHH, ok, time to throw in another picture.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7

Don’t try to reason with goblins. They are natural tricksters who will steal the tasty, nutritious gold right out of your jangling pockets!

Meanwhile, police backup is shooting rounds into Goblin’s chest without any effect. Goblin’s getting madder! Spider-Man is nervous! I’ve got to pee, hold on.

Ahhh, that’s better. Spider-Man urges the cops to stop shooting, Goblin utters “PPPAAARRRKER!” again like some sort of reverse Pokemon. Goblin leaps at Spider-Man, Spider-Man dodges, Goblin falls off the bridge that they are on and into the water below. In a twist that only Stan Lee’s corpse could have predicted, the cops start telling Spider-Man to stand down! Now, obviously, Peter Parker’s wimpy caved-in chest can’t withstand a hail of bullets, let alone cop bullets! They demand that he takes off his mask, but we all know how much Spider-Man hates being told that. The police start firing, Spider-Man starts doing some contrived acrobatics in order to avoid the bullets, and he topples over the side of the bridge as well. The police lose him, and this laborious action scene is finally over. Jesus Fuck, man.

The school is in shambles! Shambles, I say! Reporters, police, firefighters, and barely-traumatized students are all over the school grounds. Everyone is speculating on who the mysterious Green Goblin was. “It was the Hulk!” says Kong, fulfilling his Marvel contract to occasionally name-drop other franchises. “It was my father.” says Harry Osborne, gothily.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #7

“You’re full of shit, Osborne! Go back to bed!”

So, yeah, everyone else is like “Buh” about what Harry has said, but Harry insists that it’s true. “I saw it with my own eyes!” he says, regarding Norman’s laboratory experiments. “He turned himself into that! On purpose!” The cops shove him out of sight, probably into a cop car to take him to the dang looney bin. Where he belongs. Peter Parker goes into soliloquy guilt mode as follows:

“Oh man — Harry. Should I tell you the truth? How do I tell you? If that monster was your father — he wasn’t here to kill you. He was trying to kill me. Or maybe both of us. I don’t even know. I mean, why would he want to kill either of us? Why? Did what turned me into Spider-Man turn your dad into that? Did what happened to him have something to do with what happened to me? I don’t know. I don’t even know what really happened to me yet. Does it really matter? I mean, it’s all over. Hang in there, Harry.”

WE CUT TO THE WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE WHERE THERE ARE BUBBLES. THE END.

Final Thoughts

And so ends the first Ultimate Spider-Man story arc! Thrills! Chills! Suspense! Romance! Spiders! Dead Uncles! Green Goblins! Teenage Angst! Stan Lee! Roll credits!

What will become of Peter Parker? What will become of Harry Osborne? When will MJ suck on Spider-Man’s face upside-down in the rain? What will become of Uncle Ben? Oh wait, he’s dead. Is Aunt May seeing someone else? What’s going on with the Green Goblin? When will MJ suck on Spider-Man’s dick upside-down in the rain? I demand to know!

Ugh. I’m hungry.


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Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6 – “Beneath the Glass”

* Part 6 of 6 of the Court of Owls storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman (Vol. 2) Issue #6 – “Beneath the Glass”! This issue marks the final part of the Court of Owls storyline! In the previous installment, Batman cavorts happily around some crazy death maze where he slowly loses his mind over the course of the entire issue before getting unceremoniously stabbed by Talon himself! So he’s dead! At the same time, the Bat-Signal explodes because Commissioner Gordon left it on for nine days straight! So that’s dead too! A scrappy little kid dressed up as Robin (maybe it’s Robin?) pops in to tell the Commissioner to get another Bat-Signal immediately. Is all hope lost? Is Batman really dead? Is this story going to ACTUALLY be concluded in Issue #6 or is it going to spill over into the Night of Owls storyline that crosses over into a dozen other Batman family comic series (most likely!)? Read on, bitches!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Scott Snyder
“Beneath the Glass”

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6

The cover is mighty creepy! Are we to expect that Mr. Batman is going to turn into some feral woodland beast-type creature, lacking pupils in his eyeballs as he claws endlessly in front of him? I hope so! That would make for an interesting shift in Batman’s mythos, all tearin’ up all the Robins, just one Robin after another with his merciless fangs. One can dream…

“Batman, the Court of Owls has sentenced you to die!” Talon seductively speaks into Batman’s ear as he impales him with a dang knife. He continues to taunt him as Batman twitches and strains on the floor, letting him know that the Court will send his bones down into the labyrinth to be displayed as some sort of high school science class presentation for education purposes! Talon holds up Batman’s still-alive, frail, trembling, frankly rather disgusting looking body to show the Court for their vote on his manner of death. “Break his neck!” says one member. “No! Bleed him!” says another. “Take his feet” says the fetishist of the gang. The Court eventually decides to let the youngest member of their cute little death organization, a little girl in an owl mask clutching a doll, settle Batman’s fate. “Let him go!” she says. Haha! No she doesn’t! She actually says “Hurt him…more.” What the fuck!

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6

We gotta do what little Wednesday Addams demands, guys. Our hands are tied!

We are treated to the comic book equivalent of a snuff film as Talon ruthlessly pummels Batman around the face area, mostly; blood spurting everywhere like a spoon digging into grapefruit. Worth noting at this point is that, from Batman’s point of view, all these regular human beings in owl face masks look like a group of unkempt, smelly-looking bird creatures. As they descend upon his broken body, Batman laments his dwindling strength and gives in to certain death like some sort of ninny.

Looks like this is it.

This is the end.

No more Batman.

I’m sure all the comic book artists are writers are pissed now that they’re out of a job and-

WAIT A MINUTE! With a burst of sudden strength, Batman POPS up on his feet screaming “ENOUGH!” and boy does he look a little irked! The horde of bird creatures are scared and they run away! Talon chuckles to himself like a real comic book bad guy and continues to taunt Batman, who looks deranged as shit right now. Batman announces that he’s tired of owls now and starts kicking Talon’s ass. They seem to be evenly matched for a couple of pages: Talon shoves a pointy piece of metal against Batman’s chest, Batman breaks one of the lenses of Talon’s super cool-looking night-vision owl goggles, stuff like that. Batman’s getting pretty annoyed now, starts telling Talon how he’s sick of this guy following him all around town, making him play his game, not knowing who he is and why, so he wants to turn the tables! Does Batman have a secret labyrinth that he can throw Talon in for a few days? That would be neat.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6

RAAWWWWRR! BATMAN POWER ACTIVATE!

But no, Batman just starts taunting him back while continuing to beat him up and Talon basically starts crying about it. “You’re nothing but a common criminal!” Batman says, really hitting him where it hurts. With a finishing blow, Talon crumbles through a wall, and Batman yells to the Court to come out and face him. He begins another “MY CITY! MINE!”-type diatribe, which really tells me that Batman’s main weakness is knowing that any entity knows Gotham better than he does. I know people like that in real life too, it’s not an attractive trait.

Now sit tight, because he’s had a convoluted plan this whole time that he’s going to start talking to Talon about while Talon is unable to do anything about it: Batman noticed that the labyrinth is made of construction marble, but the base of the fountain near the river is made of white marble. White marble is softer and more prone to explosions, so it’s a good thing he filched some filament plates from Talon’s camera flash mechanism. Now, what white marble has to do with potassium chlorate I haven’t a clue, and the source of potassium chlorate is completely unclear, but nevertheless Batman makes a big thing go boom and here we are.

Batman (Vol. 2), Issue #6

You’re not special! I am! I’m the special one! Mom said I’M the special boy!

Now that Batman has seemingly eradicated the enemy, he attempts to scramble his way back above the ground. He ends up falling to the river leading into a below-ground waterfall. Oopsy-daisy! After falling down the waterfall, he discovers that the river is ceilinged by glass, preventing his further escape! Whoopsy-doodle! We see him sink below the water…dying yet again…for the 50th time during this story arc… oopsy-doopsy…

The scene returns to the room in the labyrinth where Batman finished Talon. A mysterious owl-masked feeb in a wheelchair and a Hugh Hefner smoking jacket praises the entertainment he has just witnessed. When his equally owl-masked cohorts ask him what to do with Talon’s body, Hefner instructs them to merely dispose of it as there’s plenty more where that came from! We see the room with the coffins from the previous issue (one was empty, as one recalls). THE END!

Final Thoughts

HOOOOOO-BOY, what a thrilling roller coaster ride this was, much like Batman: The Ride at your local neighborhood Six Flags amusement park…without the occasional reported accidental decapitation! So ends the Court of Owls story arc. Clearly, we’ve only just scratched the surface of this Gotham Owl infestation!

Unfortunately, Batman Vol. 2, #7 begins the Night of Owls storyline and I’m nowhere near the point yet where I should read it. Not even close! I need to read about eight issues of about eight other concurrent series first! I may never get to the Night of Owls storyline! I might die before then!

Until next time, Caped Crusaders! EXCELSIOR!


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The Fiery Furnaces

PAGE IN PROGRESS


Unlike the White Stripes, who were a fake brother/sister musical duo, the Fiery Furnaces were a real brother/sister musical duo. Eleanor Friedberger is the sister, she always looks kind of stoned and sad. Matthew Friedberger is the brother, he always looks kind of hyper and mad. They grew up near Chicago, and they’ll remind you of this fact constantly in their music.

One of the better examples of ’00s overindulgent indie rock, the duo created highly ambitious and conceptual albums bloated to the nines with extremely colorful electronic and acoustic instruments. Their music was also always dangerously slippery with slick production. The music that they created often sounded like they threw any musical idea they had into a bingo ball machine, spun it frantically, and kicked it down the stairs, for better or for worse. You can’t say that they weren’t inventive, but the music did suffer frequently from their weird-for-the-sake-of-weird approach to songwriting. When they were tight, though, they were tight. They weren’t often tight.

Eleanor handled most of the vocals, Matthew handled most of the songwriting and instrumental performances, although they would switch up from time to time. Eleanor knows how to play guitar and keyboards, and some percussion. The duo split in 2011 to embark on solo careers. In Matthew’s solo career, he does everything almost entirely by himself, and his output is frantic, all over the place, and it sucks. Eleanor, meanwhile, delegates duties to an actual band and has four good albums under her name. The solo output has made it clear to me who was the more grounded of the two during their Fiery Furnaces days.

The siblings are still on an extended hiatus, but they did release a single in June 2020 “Down at the So and So on Somewhere”, likely inspired by pandemic lockdown. Whether or not they’re returning for an actual project is unclear at this time.

Oh yeah, Franz Ferdinand’s lead singer Alex Kapranos used to date Eleanor Friedberger. The Franz Ferdinand hit “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” was about her. Maybe her feet stink.

The Fiery Furnaces’ Bandcamp page

JUMP TO:
(2003) Gallowsbird’s Bark
(2004) Blueberry Boat
(2005) EP
(2005) Rehearsing My Choir

Gallowsbird’s Bark (2003) – Rating: 9/10
No Full Album Review Yet

The Fiery Furnaces - Gallowsbird's Bark

If two supposed siblings making music together in 2003 didn’t dredge up immediate White Stripes comparisons, then the crunchy indie folk-garage sound of the Fiery Furnace’s first album absolutely should or your money back!

But never fear, the Fiery Furnaces are not at all a White Stripes ripoff band. There’s a lot of ground covered by their piano-driven blues and rock music, bringing to mind Elton John, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and many others, but really only in the “classic rock era” sense. If the Fiery Furnaces were alive in the ’60s and ’70s to make this music they would be among good company. Gallowsbird’s Bark has all the genuine flair and melodic songwriting sensibilities of the bygone era. That’s a high compliment.

The music itself is whimsical. Positive and mischievous and eccentric. Most of the spotlight is consumed by piano scales and twisty, psychedelic guitar passages. “South Is Only a Home” is the perfect opener to showcase their sensibilities right out of the gate, just a perfectly sunny slice of engaging piano rock. Each track provides a different angle of the siblings’ desire to merge their playfulness with their offbeat approach to accessible, slightly wry songwriting.

But, standing out more than anything else are Eleanor’s weird lyrics. There’s no poetry or metaphor in something like “I slit my wrists with my Swingline/Copied myself 500 times/I pierced my ears with a three-hole punch/Ate twelve dozen donuts for lunch” when describing office work in “I’m Gonna Run”, that’s for damn sure. Or how about “Leaky Tunnel”: “Dirty boy said let’s make in love in the water/I said, ‘No thanks, Pal’” Almost every song leads the listener through a thorny narrative, but then you get head-scratchers like “Two Fat Feet”: “I’ve got a busted breast and a jiggly thigh/A rumpled roast and a ragged eye/A floppy neck and two fat feet/Sneaky cheeks chewin’ greasy gums“. What the fuck is Eleanor talking about? Who cares! There’s so much charm here it makes me wanna puke in a fantastic way!

The debut is the Fiery Furnaces at their best, there’s no doubt. Touches of this straightforward pub indie rock will show up throughout their career, but never again with so much focus.

Blueberry Boat (2004) – Rating: 6/10
No Full Album Review Yet

The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat

More like Blueberry BLOAT! Eh? Eh? Ehhh.

If Gallowsbird’s Bark was the duo showing restraint to get their feet in the door, then Blueberry Boat represents what happens when they’re faced with a sense of completely unlimited freedom. 76 minutes, 13 tracks with 5 of them over 7 minutes, 20 different instruments, extremely dense arrangements, progressive song structures, full use of every electronic sound effect and manipulation you can possibly utilize. This release is the musical equivalent to an entire tray of the richest, sweetest fudge in the world. And you’re expected to eat all of it one sitting.

That right there is the sticking point. This music is fun! It’s total fun! It’s catchy, sprawling, bouncy, playful, addictive, and constantly, constantly, full of surprises. To that end, it’s absolutely exhausting and extremely hard to absorb on any sort of level that reaches relaxing enjoyment. It’s one of those albums that you can really get into at first with sheer excitement, but by the end you’re worried that too much of a good thing will sour the fun. And it does. It does for me every time.

I’m glad “Quay Cur”, the 10-minute opener and Blueberry Boat‘s longest song, kicks things off. I would tell this track to go fuck itself if it were later in the sequencing, because here sequencing is all that matters. The stuff you like is at the front end, and the stuff you like less is at the back end simply because you’re getting burnt out on all that sweet, sweet fudge. So, yes, for my money, my limit is right about at Track 7 “Mason City”; about 40 minutes in. Lo and behold, if you wait a day and start the album from “Mason City”, the back half sounds a bit better, doesn’t it?

Gotta hand it to the Friedberger’s though. A lot of this stuff is bold and weird and just plain quaint. In the hands of better musical geniuses, something like Blueberry Boat could be trimmed by half into something absolutely spellbinding. Pitchfork gave this album a fucking score of 9.6. Luckily Arcade Fire’s Funeral came out in the same year (which scored 9.7) or everyone would still be talking about their embarrassing choice for the top album of 2004 to this very day.

EP (2005) – Rating: 8/10
No Full Album Review Yet

The Fiery Furnaces - EP

The deceptively-named third album is actually 41 minutes long, but I guess after Blueberry Boat any album would be considered an EP.

This is a marked improvement, but a true album this ain’t. EP is a glorified compilation album that collects all of the singles and B-sides that were (barely) previously released, plus two new songs. Besides trimming 30 minutes, EP also trims a lot of excessive electronic sound effects and voice modulation, resulting in a way more grounded indie pop record. The oddly charming lyrically-dissonant dark humor continues, with the first track “Single Again” displaying the most overt example (Eleanor sings lines like “He beat me he banged me, he swore he would hang me/And I wish I was single again” over cheerful music). Or maybe in “Smelling Cigarettes” where “Stunned I stayed put and a billboard truck runs over my foot“. Or maybe in “Sweet Spots” where Eleanor recounts an amusing anecdote about sneaking into a candy factory with sarcastic “A-DOO-DOO-DAH-DAH-DOO-DAH” vocal overlays. Any hints here and there of straying toward the needless abundance of Blueberry Boat are tastefully averted in the nick of time. Even the reworked version of “Tropical-Iceland” from their debut, while packed more with expanded surprises than the stripped-down original, is just as good, if not better, this time around! And it was a great song in the first place!

The Fiery Furnaces are at their best and most endearing when they’re not being deliberately obnoxious. There’s nothing particularly cathartic about EP, but it’s a fun record and the best example of the siblings can accomplish with some goddamned self-discipline. Or at least it proves that they kept it way simpler in their early days.

Rehearsing My Choir (2005) – Rating: 3/10
No Full Album Review Yet

The Fiery Furnaces - Rehearsing My Choir

God. You know what, I feel bad for this one. If it’s not obvious yet that the Friedberger siblings put a ton of effort into their work, here comes Album #4: an indescribably ambitious old-timey radio play featuring their own grandmother. It’s sweet of them to do this, they obviously thought highly of her and used their pseudo-celebrity status to elevate her. But it sucks, man.

Their grandmother, Olga Sarantos, plays herself and provides the vocals (except when Eleanor plays a younger version of her). Stories are told about her life growing up in the Chicagoland area, jumping around the timeline and spanning the 1920s to the 2000s, stories of a bygone era about young passions, lost loves, all mostly about her relationship with her husband, his death, and her grief. But there’s some stuff in there too about gypsy curses, Christmas Day church TV marketing, a doctor healing a bullet wound using blackberry jelly, and a bunch of others.

Sounds really interesting, right? Well, it could’ve been, but all the stories are complete stream-of-consciousness ramblings from a woman with an irritating blue-collar old woman voice, and there’s so much talking in lieu of singing that no one’s patience can withstand it for a whole damn hour. A lot of the piano music does complement the modest radio-play format, but Matthew overloads the arrangements with layers and layers of squeaky, bloopy, synthy, Blueberry Boat bullshit until it’s beyond tiresome. Plus, the music shifts so suddenly and so often that I don’t think there’s a single melody to be found on the record.

I give points for only two reasons: 1) Sarantos is not only a willful, eager participant, but nothing about listening to Rehearsing My Choir makes me cringe uncomfortably at her involvement. And thank fucking God for that. 2) On paper, this is one of the most original ideas I’ve ever encountered for a concept album. In practice, though, it’s a complete flop, and maybe someone more musically talented than the Friedbergers could’ve made it work. More often than not, my praise for Eleanor and Matthew targets their vision and not their execution, and Rehearsing My Choir is the most glaring example of this in their whole career.

PAGE IN PROGRESS – TO BE CONTINUED


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Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”

* Part 6 of 7 of the Power and Responsibility storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 – “Big Time Super Hero”! In the previous installment, Uncle Ben got got. He’s dead, AND we know it now! When Peter finds out that the perpetrator might be nearby, he scoots off Spider-Man style to try to kick his jerk butt! When he ruffles him up a bit, he learns that it was the VERY SAME criminal whom he let escape during another robbery, commenting “not my responsibility”. Ah, but the word “responsibility” is coming back to haunt him now! Now and forever! Everyone you love keeps dying, Peter! Who’s gonna be next? With great power comes great…something. I forget.

A lot has happened already in five issues! There’s a lot more story left, unless of course the next 100+ issues of Ultimate Spider-Man are entirely made up of just Levi’s and X-Ray Spex advertisements.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6 [April, 2001]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Big Time Super Hero”

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6

Oh boy, I completely forgot about J. Jonah Jameson as a Spider-Man character. A Spider-Man character extraordinaire, you might say. Well, YOU might not say it, but SOMEBODY might. (me). It looks like we finally get to see his first appearance in Issue #6. Mr. Jameson is shoving some newspapers in the faces of his willfully disengaged staff. It seems that all the competitive publications are printing front page news stories about this mysterious Spidered Man. And what is his newspaper, the Daily Bugle, printing as front page news? The Osborne family’s house burns down due to some lunatic pumpkin bomb-throwing maniac?? BOOOOO! That’s boring! Fuck that noise with 1000 toys, son! J. Jonah Jethro Jimbob Jameson wants his newspaper plastered with nothing but Spider-Man stories! Stories such as: Where did Spider-Man come from? Why is Spider-Man cavorting around town in his underwear? Is Spider-Man a mental patient? Is Spider-Man single? You can almost see that the artist might’ve drawn a boner on him. Look closely…yep, it’s there.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6

Boner sighted.

Speaking of cavorting around in his underwear, Peter Parker is in an attic or a garage or a shed hootin’ and hollerin’ in his tighty-whities over some dork science bullshit. I guess he, the 15-year-old teenager, has been spending a lot of his free time trying to work on the adhesive that his dad was working on before he died? Snooooze. Why isn’t this kid out egging cars or trying to get laid instead? It almost looks like he spooged all over a frying pan! So, I guess in this universe Spider-Man webs don’t actually come out of his wrists naturally? In this universe he actually has to sit down and do some science to make this web gunk and fill a spray bottle with it? He spends a lot of panels fetishizing this new spoogy super glue stuff, looking forward to tweaking the recipe to make it juuuuuuuust right with respect to elasticity, tackiness, strength, character, and panache, and flavor. He can’t wait to trial-and-error his way through it all! “Man, Uncle Ben would’a loved this.” he says, clearly no longer grieving probably 14 hours after the guy got killed. Aunt May yells at him to go to bed. Parker continues hanging from the ceiling, which isn’t where his bed is. It isn’t where his bed is at all.

It seems that Peter Parker didn’t get much sleep, because he’s snoring away at his desk at school while the student body gawks like crazed monkeys. One kid looks particularly intense and ravenous. Parker’s teacher yells at him, which startles the poor kid into breaking another desk with a heartily exclaimed “NNYAA!”. After the teacher threatens to tell the basketball coach, Parker tells her not to bother because he quit the team. This sends the local jocks into a tailspin of sadness hitherto unknown four issues ago! “It just wasn’t me,” Parker explains sheepishly. “Your uncle croaks so you can’t play ball?” Kong says, hilariously. Oh man, the fire in MJ’s eyes after hearing that one. Hoo boy. Oh man. Whoa nelly.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6

NOT PICTURED THIS TIME: A boner.

To make matters even more awkward and weird, Harry Osborne strolls through the school hallway like a distracted zombie wearing a shitty turtleneck. He keeps responding to statements like “We were worried about you!” and “I’m so sorry about your family!” with stuff like “Yeah?” and “Are you?” and “Why?”, so it’s like hey thanks for showing up I guess. And because bad luck comes in threes, enormous explosions rocket through the hallways throwing kids everywhere! Did Kong fart? NO! Harry Osborne, stricken with possibly turtleneck-related panic and trepidation, suspects that it’s the mysterious flying demon that scorched the Osborne mansion. Another explosion, as written in the comic book, goes “FRABOOM”. Harry thinks that this flying demon is trying to kill him again and yells for help.

Never fear, Spider-Man is here! We are treated to a full-page view of Spider-Man’s taint as he leaps forward to save the day! There are kids below him staring up at the taint too. It’s quite a taint.

Hold on, we are taken to the scene just moments ago with Peter Parker ducking into a restroom to change. As the fire sprinkler system rains water down on him, he runs through his anxieties about having to possibly explain why Spider-Man was in the school and if his peers will figure out his secret identity. Good thing kids are dumb, Parker, you would’ve been fine. He decides to duck back out of the building and change behind some parked cars. After the old switcheroo, we are treated to another identical page of Spider-Man’s full-blown taint, and we proceed from here.

Spider-Man scours the water- and smoke-filled school hallways on a MISSION to find a BAD GUY. One emerges from the smoke! He throws some quips at the hulking (edit: not the Hulk) figure towering before him, like “I wanna see your hall pass” and “Are you the new Home Ec teacher?” because comic book nerds who grow up to be comic book writers still like to put 1960’s comic book nerd humor in them. Spider-Man is awfully cocky for someone who has never encountered a real villain before, unless that villain is VIRGINITY then he is well-acquainted! This scary fireball-lancing villain wears a purple cloak and has muscular legs and a visible package. IS HE WILLEM THE FOE? Ha! See, I can be just as funny as Spider-Man.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #6

Super-Man, proving time and time again, that he thinks he cute.

As he’s duking it out with the Deep Purple Fireball his inner monologue reveals that he’s actually one false move away from shitting his Spidey-Tighties, but he’s largely preoccupied with how the fuck he’s going to end this little encounter gracefully. This little dilemma eventually resolves itself, albeit without the graceful part, when our malefactor grabs onto Spider-Man and launches both of them through a brick wall and into the ionosphere. While getting taken way the hell up into the sky, Spider-Man gets a good look at the face of this goblin who is green…for lack of a better identifier how about we just call him the Green Goblin (yes, that’ll do)…and this goblin utters “PPPPRRRRKKKKEERRRR…” Oh my!

Final Thoughts

Man, watching the first Spider-Man movie from 2002 really spoiled a lot of the twists for me in this comic book series! Then again, this is Earth-1610! The Green Goblin could be Peter Falk for all I know. Peter Falk as Columbo. I read once that Peter Falk used to wander away between takes on the Columbo set and the stagehands always had to find him to bring him back. Wait, what was I talking about again?

I already know who the Green Goblin is! I have no speculations! See you in Issue #7.


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