New View
Following the quietly great *Last Summer* and *Personal Record*, the former Fiery Furnace’s third solo album filters folksy \'60s- and \'70s-style rock (think Zombies or Bob Dylan) through the slacker brilliance of \'90s indie bands like Pavement. Wry, romantic, and written with enough offbeat detail to fill a Wes Anderson movie, *New View* captures the ins and outs of relationships in a voice that’s bittersweet (“Never Is a Long Time”), funny (“Cathy With the Curly Hair”), and, more often than not, both (“Sweetest Girl”).
Eleanor Friedberger's solo music has long made New York City its stage, but she moved to upstate New York to write her third solo album New View. The record’s no-fuss, featherlight acoustic pop songs weave into one another seamlessly, Friedberger’s melodies familiar and redolent of artists like Harry Nilsson and Neil Young without playing like nostalgia.
The Fiery Furnaces, indie rock’s sibling-duo answer to the noodling art songs of Henry Cow and Slapp Happy, split at the start of this decade. Since then, multi-instrumentalist, chief songwriter, and expert-level interview shit-talker Matthew Friedberger has focused on tossed-off quickies and admirably unlistenable…
Among midlife indie kids working a sidelong vision of classic-rock ecstasy, there aren’t many doing it with more grace or smarts than Eleanor Friedberger.
‘New View’ is the most self-assured realisation of Friedberger’s delicately eloquent musical talent.
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From the gliding guitar progression of He Didn’t Mention His Mother and the swelling Open Season, New View is a warm and rustic listen.
One of the few positives of the untimely demise (or semi-permanent hiatus) of the Fiery Furnaces has been the emergence of Eleanor Friedberg...
At first glance, the titles of Eleanor Friedberger's first two solo records provide context for her clever, knotted lyrics and oddball pop melodies.
A classic Seventies air possesses much of the material here in similarly effective fashion to Eleanor Friedberger’s previous offering,
The former Fiery Furnaces member opts for simplicity on her hook-laden third solo album
A rural relocation and some more traditional arrangements fail to blunt all of Friedberger’s quirks on her third solo outing
For an artist who rose to indie rock prominence with the Fiery Furnaces in part due to pushing boundaries through pseudo-prog song structure and instrumentation, Eleanor Friedberger’s solo albums have been pretty straightforward.
Eleanor Friedberger - New View review: Today I'm frozen, but tomorrow I'll write about you.