Confoundingly brilliant brother-sister duo The Fiery Furnaces are back! “It sounds exciting, right?”

ROB MITCHUM

“THE word ‘reunion’ makes me cringe,” says Eleanor Friedberger. want to replace ‘reunion’ with ‘rendezvous’,” her brother Matthew suggests. “It sounds exciting, right?”

Sibling revivalry: Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger reconvene their band

When a band is a brother-sister project, it’s not really possible to break up. Since their last show as The Fiery Furnaces in 2011, Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger haven’t played much together, but they’re still family, in contact as much as any adult siblings would be. They’d chatted about recording and touring again, but busy with solo projects, their calendars never aligned. However, an offer to play the 2020 Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago gave them a concrete appointment, and for the first time in almost a decade, one of the most unique, divisive bands of 2000s indie rock was back, with plans for shows and a new album filling out the year. Then a pandemic happened.