Wednesday 10/05/06 Fiery Furnaces, Scissors for Lefty @ Kings College, London

A further gauge into the inclination for all bands blade-related sees San Francisco’s Scissors for Lefty splice into a set of new-wave synth melodic meanders.  Despite enormously valiant hip-gyration efforts by the bassist, the Pavement-esque wandering tunes do little to inspire a static audience into gyrations of their own.

With a more traditional right-handed take on things, The Fiery Furnaces take to the stage: Eleanor all virginal white and lucid intensity; quiet, unassuming yet stoic presence radiating with insubordinate avant-garde valour.  This is a band renowned for their live cliff-hanger gratification: less the instant sugar rush of a Mars Delight, more the self-satisfaction of acquiring an acquired taste: olives or something.  Basically, they do whatever the hell they want on stage.  Tonight though, there’s no artistic brushstroke that can disguise the fact that there is definitely something missing.  Nothing too dramatic, but for a band renowned for challenging cut and paste narratives, this is somewhat disappointing.  Expand crinkling critical brows!  Elaborate on wayward Granddaughters and paw paw trees.  A conversely brave move to strip down the set and supersede synths and keys with guitars sadly quashes quirks and oddities with whitewash normality. 

Vocals are spat with lightening velocity, highlighting Eleanor’s endearingly child-like ability to spew the most complex lyrics with defiance and petulance, yet fragile vulnerability.  Matt’s beady stares exude a shyness beautifully shrouded in self-belief and a brotherly boldness to knock critics for six with the flick of a hefty fringe.  It is said critics that perhaps explain the reliance on older material for the majority of the set: ‘Bitter Tea’ seems to have taken a back seat along with it’s tinkly synth peers.

‘Candymaker’s Knife…’ still captures the idiosyncrasies that the Furnaces embody, veering from horror film rants of “zapped by zombies” to the terrifying Hansel and Gretel imagery of “twice baked brioche and Danish pastry pockets.”  The gorgeously naïve ballad of ‘Evergreen’ is sweet, and the paired down set up no longer detracts from the nursery school ingenuousness.  ‘Single Again’ and ‘Straight Street’ prove their worth as the sibling deities of art-rock grandmother nonsense: please, please just don’t.  Rock.  Out.