Furnace heat

I’ve always found that the music I love best, the music that stays with me through the years, is music that takes a little time to warm to. Songs that are instantaneously ingratiating are often quick to pale into boredom, but those complex enough to be initially off-putting reveal their appeal on third or fourth or fifth listen and become long-term infatuations.

Unfortunately, my life as a working parent these days does not leave as much room as it once had for third or fourth or fifth listens. And so sometimes I’ll check out a new band’s music and, if my auditory fancy is not instantly seized, I’ll put the CD or the files aside for months, even years. Frequently, this means I’ll miss the boat for an unconscionable length of time.

I certainly missed The Blueberry Boat. This album by the Fiery Furnaces was an indie-critical sensation when it came out in 2004. But the spectral nautical rambling of the album’s 10-minute opener, “Quay Cur,” didn’t grab me quickly when I brought it home, so it languished at the bottom of my pile, and I am only falling in love with it now.

It’s a collection of long story-suites (the band’s brother-and-sister creators, Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, have cited Who pop suites like “Rael” and “A Quick One While He’s Away” as influences) that hop restlessly from theme to theme, spitting off throwaway melodies and opaquely allusive, effusively articulate lyrics. The title track features an assault by pirates; “Chris Michaels” seems to tune onto the wavelength of a suburban gossip; “Mason City” takes snapshots of the 19th-century midwest from formal correspondence and railway company files; “Chief Inspector Blancheflower” seems to be a sort of Victorian policier unfolding in the mind of a bored typewriter-repairperson manque.

I hear fragments of everything from Phil Spector to Philip Glass in the mix; there are snarly-catchy guitar solos and even gospel flourishes (in the frantic “I Lost My Dog”). Some of Matthew Friedberger’s sound treatments hark back to the heyday of early Eno. (The fanfare at the start of “Mason City” sounds a lot like a sped-up outtake from Another Green World. And both Blueberry and Here Come the Warm Jets feature songs with “Paw-Paw” in their titles!) Other synthesizer flourishes fondly recall the bombast of the prog-rock era, though that label is one the Furnaces understandably do not embrace. One evening, when I turned up Blueberry Boat in my office, my wife shouted incredulously from the next room, “Wow — Emerson, Lake and Palmer?” Not exactly — but not crazy, either.

The followup to Blueberry, apparently a tribute to the Friedbergers’ grandmother titled Rehearsing My Choir, has gotten a colder critical reception. But before making up my own mind, I’m going to listen to it at least a half dozen times — as soon as I get the chance.