The Fiery Furnaces are brother and sister Eleanor and Matt Friedberger (both on vocals and guitar, Matt on synth and organ). The band also contains Andy Knowles on drums and Toshi Yano on bass and synth. Andy and Toshi both joined the band in time for their 2004 tour.
Eleanor and Matt were born and raised in Oak Park, IL and they weren't exactly the closest of siblings growing up.
Before forming the Fiery Furnaces, Eleanor earned a University of Texas B.A and worked as a telemarketer for the Texas Republican Party. Her subsequent years included a year spent in London and trips with her mother to the south of France, Italy and Greece. Matt, on the other hand, went to Germany at 17, and managed to learn not a word of German or even have a good time – apparently pining for mommy and daddy and doggy, and the comforts of home, which he was incapable of enjoying in the first place. After dropping out from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he moved back in with his mother at 26.
After college and separate trips abroad they returned to their home in Oak Park, IL and began working on music together. They mixed simple, poppy melodies with a dizzying array of wordplay, sounds, and influences, including the Who, Captain Beefheart, Os Mutantes; dashes of folk, blues, and garage rock; and Eleanor's adventures in Europe.
In 2000, they both moved to Brooklyn, took day jobs, and began playing as the Fiery Furnaces late in the year.
The Furnaces played their initial gigs at a small club called Enid's in NYC in November 2000 and branched out from there, going through several lineups of supporting musicians ranging from three-piece to five-piece as they played gigs with the French Kicks, Sleater-Kinney, and Spoon.
A series of early appearances throughout NYC resulted in them being discovered by British underground label Rough Trade, which they signed up with in 2002 on the basis of their demo. By the time they signed to Rough Trade, their debut, Gallowsbird's Bark was completed and the Fiery Furnaces were already at work on the follow-up. Released in the fall of 2003, Gallowsbird's Bark garnered critical praise for its clever wordplay and original songwriting.
The band gained more momentum the following year, when praise for the debut album dovetailed with the release of the group's even more diverse and challenging sophomore album, Blueberry Boat, that summer. The Fiery Furnaces spent much of 2004 touring with Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Franz Ferdinand, and the Shins, but already had plans for their third and fourth albums, including an album of duets with their grandmother and a set of beatnik-inspired songs. Early in 2005, the group released the simply-titled EP, a mini-album gathering most of their B-sides along with a few new songs.
