REVIEW: Eleanor Friedberger - Last Summer

I am a sappy, reminiscent fool. I think a lot of times it puts me in bad situations and doesn't allow me to move on. Than again maybe we can only learn from our past in order to not make the same mistake again. It seems like Eleanor Friedberg of the Fiery Furnaces is having the same backward looking mentality at this point in her life an career.

I spent a lot of my late teens rejecting my parents music of rock and wanted a style of music that was different and my own. I subsequently fell in love with electronic music. It wasn't until college that I got back into rock and one of the first bands that jumped out at me was the Fiery Furnaces. Their live shows were amazing. They would play for an hour without stopping. I was so in shock, not knowing when to applaud that I just danced. And that is a trait that I loved about late 90s dance music.

Ten years later, Last Summer is Eleanor's first album not working with her brother. She is channeling her first years in Brooklyn. An age that I myself can't relate to, but the emotions she channels of newness and excitement of the beginning of a journey are all conveyed beautifully on this album. Eleanor worked with Eric Broucek, who usually works with dance artists on James Murphey's DFA recordings. Eric does a great job on helping make this into a timeless record.

I think Eleanor reached to a special place to create this album and did a magical job at it. It truly makes me want to go grab all my old Fiery Furnaces LPs and remember dancing at One Eyed Jacks.