Eleanor Friedberger at the Horseshoe Tavern, Tuesday July 19 Rating: NNN
It was Eleanor Friedberger‘s second time ever performing alone (the first was a few hours earlier at Soundscapes), and she did a decent job of executing an intimate 40-minute set of tunes from her just-released debut solo album, Last Summer.
“I like these free shows,” she said early on, “because there’s less pressure.” Indeed, the performance felt like a test run of the new material and included flubbed chords and forgotten transitions.
But Friedberger, the sister half of idiosyncratic indie rock sibling duo the Fiery Furnaces, is a confident performer able to make the looseness work in her favour. She furiously strummed her electric guitar and delivered her wordy, quirky lyrics with tossed-off New York City cool. And in the absence of her brother’s whimsical prog-rock tendencies, we could easily hear what she was singing about.
On the other hand, the lack of band members to fill out the arrangements left the tunes sounding more repetitive and basic than on record. Telling the large early crowd that she’s returning with a band in October earned big applause.
