As one half of proggy brother-sister duo the Fiery Furnaces, the songs Eleanor Friedberger used to sing sounded like pop music as imagined by Thomas Pynchon, or maybe Carmen Sandiego: tirelessly globe-trotting, breathlessly complex, and just a little cartoony. In a voice that sounds like a perfect cross between Patti Smith, Stephen Malkmus, and a 19th century diction coach, Friedberger spun elaborate, wildly fictional travelogues (usually written by her brother, Matthew); in one Fiery Furnaces song she was a Michigan boat captain defending her cargo of blueberries against South Asian pirates; in another she sang in Innuit, and a few songs later she was also a high school queen bee caught in a labyrinthine plot involving credit card theft. Then something unexpected happened with the release of her first solo album, 2011's terrific Last Summer. She suddenly began to apply that same keen eye for meticulous detail, propulsive narrative, and ironic humor to the one character it seemed she'd never written about before: herself.
Last Summer was a sharply observed account of Friedberger's first decade or so in New York, where she moved in the early 2000s. At times, its confessional, meticulously detailed lyrics read like ripped-out diary pages, and its brilliance was so sneaky that it was the very definition of a grower. It demonstrated an exciting shift in her songwriting that she continues to explore on her excellent new album, Personal Record. Spinning unexpectedly compelling narratives out of party-hopping New York nights ("When I Knew") and solitary shut-in afternoons ("My Own World") alike, the songs on Personal Record feel like travelogues of the mind, entertaining accounts of adventures closer to home. “The last record I did was so specific and detailed,” she said in a recent interview. “It’s nice to have a record where you can catch a glimpse of the artist and their world, but this time I wanted something where people could insert themselves into it.” She co-wrote Personal Record with a new collaborator, alt-folk singer and novelist John Wesley Harding, and adding another skilled writer to the mix seems to have gotten her out of her own head a bit.
Occasionally, she nails the one-size-fits-all timeless pop lyric: the opening track’s vivid admission, “I’d rather be two inches from your face,” the elegantly sighed, “Love is an exquisite kind of pain/ And oh, since I saw you, I’ll never be happy again.” But memory’s a funny thing; it latches onto the sensory details, even when they’re somebody else’s. “When I Knew” so perfectly captures the excitement of a blossoming friendship between music nerds that the line “We both liked weird music, so you played me Soft Machine,” practically invites you to swap out the specifics for your own favorite band; ditto the scene of the infatuated new lovers reading an e-book in the back of a cab, or the girl curiously dressed as a Dexy’s Midnight Runner for Halloween. Contrary to what she might believe, the more detailed and specific Friedberger’s songs are, the easier it is to insert yourself into them.
Personal Record is so jam-packed with clever wordplay and fleeting, sometimes contradictory emotions (“I’ll Never Be Happy Again” is followed by the calisthenic skip of “Stare at the Sun”, a song about being dizzyingly happy) that it occasionally feels as much like a short story collection as it does an album. But the tight, buoyant pop arrangements keep it from getting bogged down. Despite Friedberger’s singular phrasing and voice, there’s something inviting and comfortingly familiar about Personal Record’s approach to pop melody. The great “She’s a Mirror” sounds at once like Hall & Oates covering “Lust for Life” and the Peanuts shuffling to a Harry Nilsson tune-- but its amiable melody and boingy bassline give an easy entry point to a song that's lyrically devious.
Like the title Personal Record itself, Friedberger’s songs use double meaning to great (and sometimes genuinely funny) effect, but they become suddenly poignant in the moments when those defenses fall away. “Other Boys” is one of the most candid, quietly devastating songs she’s ever written: It’s about the kind of casual, open relationship that, secretly, only one of the parties wants to be casual and open. In her ever-confident voice she pantomimes a shrug, but someone who didn’t care about the competition wouldn’t make a list of her guy’s side chicks as poetic and mythologized as the Iliad’s Catalogue of Ships: “The long-tail pony with the thick, dark mane/ 14 hands, four thousand names,” “the spider you kissed in the stairwell,” and the subtly cutting, “that sometime star of stage and screen who had a bit part in a film back in her teens.” “There are other boys, too,” she insists, her about-face betrayed by the slightest tinge of melancholy. With each repetition, the line becomes a little harder to believe, and a little more heartbreaking.
Ultimately, though, Friedberger’s self-aware enough to be amused by the irony of confessional songwriting. This becomes explicit on “Singing Time”, Personal Record’s bittersweet finale. Over a muted, aqueous guitar, Friedberger finally lets go of a doomed relationship: “You could turn up late and miss the show, or sit in the middle of the very front row/ He would not know, he would not know.” It’s appropriately downcast until-- in a swell of synth and percussion-- the song suddenly takes flight. “Let’s go, my songs,” she sings, a meta-address that's somehow both playful and self-deprecating. “One day we will know more.” Up until then, the song’s been a tear-jerker, but in this moment it becomes oddly triumphant. It’s hard to think of many other songwriters in indie rock right now who’d be able to pull off that kind of tonal shift-- probably because very few are writing with half the precision, wit, and cool poise that Friedberger displays here.
