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Preview Tue Jun 04 2013
Eleanor Friedberger's Personal Record Came Out Today, See Her Twice in Chicago This Friday, 6/7
Chicago gets its Eleanor Friedberger fix this week.
The Oak Park native and sisterly half of The Fiery Furnaces dropped her second solo album, Personal Record, today on Merge Records. And this Friday, Friedberger plays two shows in Chicago: a headlining, full-band set at the Empty Bottle, and a free, acoustic in-store performance at Reckless Records in Wicker Park.
Personal Record is a lovely, double entendre of an album title, and the songs themselves form another solid exploration into Friedberger's music-savvy, stream of consciousness mind.
With the Fiery Furnaces, her brother Matthew was responsible for a lot of impressive but also frequently intimidating musical wizardry. Eleanor always seemed to be the easy-going, personable foil to her brother. And with her 2011 debut solo record, Last Summer, Friedberger came out strong showing a knack for writing familiar '70s rock and pop influenced songs with a disarming straightforwardness.
"I like to work out my problems out on the court, so to speak," Friedberger recently told NPR, referring to the frequent personal anecdotes in her songs.
Indeed, the songs on Personal Record feature some occasionally complicated rhyme schemes and diatribes (which, this time around, come from of a collaboration with songwriter John Wesley Harding) about characters, experiences, and episodes from her own life. She laments post-perfection disappointments on "I"ll Never Be Happy Again" and details a shakey friendship on "That Was When I Knew".
Music-wise, Personal Record features crisp and clean production that is steeped in Friedberger's own voracious appetite for familiar pop music.
Watch the video for Personal Record's first single, "Stare at the Sun" below:
Eleanor Friedberger stops by her hometown this Friday for a headlining, full-band set at the Empty Bottle at 9:30pm. For those who can't make that show, Friedberger will also have an acoustic in-store performance at Reckless Records in Wicker Park earlier in the evening at 6:30pm.
The Empty Bottle is located at 1035 N. Western Ave. Tickets are still on sale for $15, and the show is 21+.
The acoustic in-store performance at Reckless Records is free and open to all ages. Reckless Records is located at 1532 N. Milwaukee Ave.
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