This weekend, Eleanor Friedberger will be performing in Portland in support of her newest album New View, her third solo record outside the oeuvre of The Fiery Furnaces, an experimental indie-rock duo that she led with her brother Matthew Friedberger.
While Fiery Furnaces confirmed Eleanor’s knack for transgressing boundaries of pop music with its esoteric lyrics and meticulously polished, nine-plus-minute tracks (please listen to 2004’s Blueberry Boat if you have a moment), Eleanor’s solo albums have increasingly found her settling into a more personal, accessible territory. But it’d be selling the record criminally short to classify it as adult-contemporary music, since it takes more risks than that.
Her forlorn musings and capricious stories are present from New View’s opener “He Didn’t Mention His Mother,” in which she offers: “Today I am frozen but tomorrow I’ll write about you.” Eleanor’s droll, plainspoken tone is utterly confident throughout the record, which is instilled with a sense of solemnity in retrospect.
“Because I Asked You,” fixed in the record’s midpoint, is certainly one of the highlights from New View. Its buoyant organ ambling behind Eleanor’s troubled, inquisitive words, “Why would you want to tell me the truth, or furnish me with mathematical proof?”
Eleanor’s newest is certainly simpler in scope than her prior releases, but it nonetheless embodies how she has maintained her touch as an affectingly human songwriter.
Eleanor Friedberger will be at Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge (830 E Burnside St) on Sunday, March 6. Doors open at 8 p.m. Show begins at 9. Tickets are $12-14. New York City’s Icewater will open.
Listen to “He Didn’t Mention His Mother” by Eleanor Friedberger below.