“I’m very excited. I love Australia,” Friedberger says. “It’ll be my fifth or sixth time visiting, and I even get to spend a few days hanging out, because the shows are spread out over two weekends. So I’m going to mutually divide my time between Melbourne and Sydney and hopefully have some fun on the few days I have off. I never get to do that. I spent a week in Sydney once just for fun and that was amazing. I feel like I know that city pretty well.” Speaking of Sydney, while she’s there Friedberger will be performing at The Famous Spiegeltent on January 28 and 29 as part of the Sydney Festival. And she’s not quite sure what to expect, being new to the whole tent format. “I dunno, are there gonna be circus performers? I don’t know how I’m going to approach that! Since putting out this record I’ve been switching off between playing with the band and also doing these shows on my own. I would love to come to Australia with a full band but it’s financially prohibitive. So I’m coming by myself, which is good and something a bit different, maybe. Better suited to something like the Spiegeltent, anyway. But we’ll see. I’m going to do a couple of shows to warm up, playing by myself in January in New York. Hopefully I’ll be in the full swing of it by the time I get down to you guys.”
Truth be told, it won’t be the first time some of the Last Summer material has been performed in such a stripped back manner. Eleanor explains: “I just had an email from a friend who said she heard the song My Mistakes on some National Public Radio thing where I was just playing acoustic guitar by myself, and that song was only two chords. For her to hear it like that she was kind of shocked because she’s only heard me play it with the band and the record version. It was sweet of her to say that she loves it every way. But the songs are so simple, so I think it goes over okay.” But sticking to the script has never been part of Friedberger’s musical vocabulary anyway. The Fiery Furnaces live performances have always diverted from the recorded versions – it’s just in the Friedberger blood. “Playing in The Fiery Furnaces for so long, we’ve always made a point of not trying to recreate the albums live, because we want it to be a different experience,” Friedberger says. “We’ve always felt strongly about that. I’m playing with three other guys – guitar, bass and drums – and we don’t change the arrangement or anything but I have a terrific guitar player who can play the piano parts on the guitar. But I am playing with a straight-up rock band which doesn’t quite sound like the album.”
The album was mostly written on piano, so some serious decisions had to be made in transitioning the material to the more colourful instrumentation of the finished product. “I wrote the album mostly on piano so it was a bit of a challenge to figure out what would work,” she says. “I have this MIDI keyboard that my brother lent me, and I just started using Garageband for the first time. Like for the song My Mistakes I knew I wanted a sax solo, and I was able to make a demo with a sax solo just playing it on the keyboard. It sounds funny but I was able to present that to the producer and say, ‘This is what it should sound like.’ I’ve never done that before on my own and it’s kinda fun.” Friedberger prefers not to get too techy in the writing and demoing stage though. “I don’t know how seriously to take Garageband. I like recording in a studio, and I don’t want to get too good at recording myself.” She laughs: “I don’t think I’m at risk of that, but I like the idea of letting someone who really knows what they’re doing take over.”
Friedberger has already begun writing the follow-up to Last Summer, but this time the writing is mostly taking place on the guitar. It’ll be interesting to see where that leads the material. Some of those tracks are being performed when Friedberger plays with her full band. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they get a showing in acoustic mode. And if you’re waiting for new Fiery Furnaces material, don’t hold your breath, but don’t give up hope either. “We don’t have any set plans except that it’s an inevitable thing to happen,” Friedberger says. “I’m going to work on another record by myself first before teaming back up with my brother. I have the record half done. Not the recording, but the songwriting is half done. I think it’s good for The Fiery Furnaces to take a little bit of a break. And when we come back we’ll be stronger than ever. I always say that Matt and I could make a record when we’re 60 and it wouldn’t be any different, really, and that’s the beauty of being a band with your brother.”
