I met one of my idols last week. This doesn’t happen often, you understand, so I was pretty excited. I’ve met a few over the years, some don’t quite live up to your expectations and some far exceed them. Thankfully Eleanor was one of the latter. I don’t post about music very often, not because I don’t like it, more because I’m a massive music bore, and a bit of a music snob too if I’m honest. The Fiery Furnaces are one of my favourite bands, and Eleanor Fiedberger, the band’s singer released a solo album a few months ago called Last Summer, one of my records of the year.
Here’s the video for My Mistakes, the single from that album, where you can see Eleanor exercising and shaving her legs…
One of my favourite things about The Fiery Furnaces are their mind-bendingly bizarre and obtuse lyrics. Ex-Guru from the album Widow City, a song so good that it’s been covered by David Byrne from the Talking Heads features these lines –
“I burned all my clothes with eucalyptus juice, ripped out the floors and painted all the platforms puce, and I went so far as to sacrifice a second snake to Zeus”.
In case you can’t tell by now I have a massive crush on Eleanor and who could blame me? I’m a sucker for a good fringe. The Fiery Furnaces feature Eleanor and her brother Matt, I’ve told my sister this, in the hope that she’ll suggest we form a band together, but to be honest I don’t think we’d sound too good.
Eleanor played at the Bethnal Green Working Mens Club, a venue where I once sang Prince’s Raspberry Beret on the same heart shaped stage, I tore the roof off the place of course* and a small Japanese woman told me I was amazing. At least that’s what I think she said.
Look, she totally loves me!
*this has been needlessly exaggerated
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