Blueberry Boat Turns 20 (Stereogum, 2024)
The Fiery Furnaces’ ‘Blueberry Boat’ Turns 20
For a brief and spectacular moment two decades years ago, it seemed like every band could be the Fiery Furnaces. Every band could make music bursting with ideas, suffused with charm, willing to try almost anything to give its listeners a thrill. Blueberry Boat, released 20 years ago this Saturday, was a double album whose signature tracks stretched past seven minutes in multi-part suites — not a rock opera (though it was fun to pretend that it was) so much as a masterful short story collection about the burning, globalized world. Today it stands as a pinnacle of indie’s artistic ambition, and a dense universe still open to exploration and discovery.
Mike Barthel
Very excited to have my first piece in Stereogum! It's about Blueberry Boat, the album that gave me my start as a music critic. You can read it above.
