Don’t you think we should start in Brooklyn? Why yes, me too…
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[7.00]
Jer Fairall: “If that was goodbye then the sea has run dry / so I’ll fill it with tears instead,” she sings in what might be the most joyous possible delivery of a lyric this melodramatic, and why not: “Stare at the Sun” cuts heartbreak off at the pass by brazenly defying and even denying it. The Annie Hall-like relationship montage allows her to write her own happy ending from amber sepulchres of the scattered memories of morning rituals and lovers reading to each other from their smart phones on taxi rides. Accordingly, the frisky accompaniment, a reminiscence of the days when “college radio” mostly meant the jangly, earnest guitar pop of R.E.M., The dB’s and Game Theory (RIP Scott Miller), feels something like a stubbornly preserved memory itself, another exile that the sheer buoyancy of Friedberger’s presentation all but assures cannot possibly last.
[9]
Britt Alderfer: Eleanor Friedberger is so smart. She has a way with words, with humor, with imagery, with tweaking memories. She’s a master at including slivers of her everyday life into her lyrics — always just the right slivers — that offer potentially devastating insights into your own life. “Other Boys”, another track from this album, is easily one of the best songs of 2013 that wasn’t a single but I won’t divert my attentions too much, for “Stare at the Sun” is lovely and anxious, and has lines like “Give me your toothpaste / Give me your ointment / Give me your body in bed…” “Cooperative coffee and synchronized showers…” “If that was goodbye than you must be high“. And of course there’s “I’m far from the town in the suburbs of your pleasure“. It’s almost too much, but not quite, and it actually fits in well with the song’s nervous energy.
[8]
Iain Mew: Much of Eleanor Friedberger’s excellently titled Personal Record reminds me of later Belle & Sebastian’s updates of ’70s rock tropes. She has a similar way of acknowledging the distance from the originals while side-stepping the traps of reverence and irony. At times it’s glorious, but “Stare at the Sun” is too stodgy and lumbered with a very overused title phrase. More “The Blues are Still Blue” than “I’m a Cuckoo”, it’s one of the last songs I’d pick to demonstrate the album’s appeal.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Friedberger’s smoky textures and sense of momentum have often been the most memorable parts of her Fiery Furnaces and solo albums, and while the guitar solo is itself smoky and momentous the lyrical conceits stick to her tried and true, not to mention everyone else’s.
[6]
Anthony Easton: I am a sucker for these kinds of small-detail, musically bouncy, lyrically clever manic breakdowns, especially ones about sex, or breakups, or the failures of the same.
[7]
Frank Kogan: The guitar strums want us to rush, while the singing is strangely precise, as if narrating the music more than participating in it — yet the result is kinda funny, reminding me of early “new wave” back when the term referred to the supposedly safe and zany alternative to punk rock. This is not what I remember from the Fiery Furnaces the few times I’d dipped into them. Time for another dip?
[7]
Cédric Le Merrer: Mines the same ’70s AOR sound as late Belle & Sebastian, but where for them it’s the sound of a sort of rococo abandon, this is a tight arrangement for feelings tightly held under control. Friedberger’s sound fetishism is far more precise than a vintage Polaroid filter. I’d bet there were vintage amps & mics and stuff like that involved. Authenticity’s under control, like everything else, which once again works given the song’s subject. But if it all makes the song really good, it also keeps it from ever reaching greatness. She’d have to allow herself a few seconds of staring at the sun for us to really understand why she’s so afraid of release.
[7]
Brad Shoup: In bringing this to the group’s attention, Jer mentioned Game Theory. It makes so much sense: “Stare at the Sun” has the poet’s pleasure — sly, sparing consonance, the transfer of perspective from singer to object and back again — and Scott Miller’s propensity for caffeinated guitar-pop arrangements. I love Scott, and I miss him terribly, but hooks were the smallest compartment of his tackle box, just as it often was for Fiery Furnaces. The refrain constrasts with the casual cleverness of its surroundings, but Friedberger chose a too-common image. But what’s not common enough? Twin fucking guitars. Let ’em talk.
[7]