The Fiery Furnaces: Remember

In 2005, sibling duo The Fiery Furnaces recorded

and released an album prominently featuring their grandmother, in the process

making it clear that they cared little for indie-rock convention. Their latest audacious move: a

double-live album that, surprisingly, works—primarily due to some

innovative sequencing and arranging. A stripped-down aesthetic colors much of Remember, as the group's normally

fey, fragile material becomes increasingly aggressive, even muscular,

throughout these live performances. While the approach irons out some of the

Furnaces' beloved eccentricities, it also shows the band embracing a fuller,

more confident sound—one that it has yet to fully capture in the studio.

Yet Remember

is weighed down a bit by its own obsessive tendencies. It's apparent that the

album is to be understood as an exercise in collective memory, but it's unclear

whether such an exercise is meant to include the band's fans, or if it's solely

limited to the band itself.