Eleanor Friedberger

At a time when most female singer-songwriters perform as alter egos, Eleanor Friedberger is simply, refreshingly herself. And that's just the way her fans like it. Having spent the last decade fronting the indie-rock institution The Fiery Furnaces (currently on hiatus) with her brother Matthew, in 2011 she emerged as a formidable solo artist with Last Summer, a thoughtfully crafted tale of memory and place couched in the organic pop of her '70s idols. Instantly, Friedberger established herself as a modern-day heir to the tradition of Donovan, Todd Rundgren, Ronnie Lane, and their ilk: Warm, nuanced, timeless songs. No gimmicks necessary.

The title of Friedberger's sophomore album is Personal Record, and it is, in a sense. Personal, that is. But not personal in the way of, say, a coming-of-age record, or a diary about the past, which Last Summer was. Many of the songs seem to be about love, or love lost, but whether any of the experience is hers or someone else's, she isn't saying. "It's not as specific a narrative this time," she says. "There's a universality to it." So incisive are the lyrics, in fact, that Friedberger's bassist incorrectly assumed that two of the songs were about him. "I loved that," she says. "I want him to feel like the songs are about him. I want you to feel like the songs are about you."

The term "personal record" also refers to an athlete's best, and the double entendre is apt. An intense decade-plus of touring and recording has burnished Friedberger's voice and imbued her songwriting with newfound depth; there's a maturity and mellifluousness to this outing that feels downright epic. It was always the Eleanor-penned songs that gave the Furnaces' albums their most poignant and graceful moments, especially in later work like I'm Going Away. Last Summer took that promise into full flower; Personal Record "is part of the same growth process," she says. Faced with a six-month gap between the completion of Last Summer and its release and accompanying tour, Friedberger holed up at home in Brooklyn; by the time the tour started, she had twelve new songs to road-test. Though most bands work this way, the Furnaces didn't. For Friedberger, touring with the unreleased material allowed her to flesh out a more rollicking, full sound from the get-go. "By the time I came home," she says, "I knew exactly what I wanted the songs to sound like."

She reunited with Last Summer producer Eric Broucek (the DFA-trained emerging talent whose clients include !!!, Hercules and Love Affair, and Jonny Pierce) to expand upon the warm, textured atmosphere of their first collaboration. Tracking began in fall 2012 with a week at Plantain Studios, the West Village home of DFA. To Friedberger's favored electric pianos and classic-rock guitars, they added a menagerie including an upright bass, an alto flute, a bass clarinet, and even a portative organ. (It's a device made of several recorders and a bellows in a frame that looks like a wooden castle. Or, actually, like Howl's Moving Castle.)

Production then resumed at Broucek's home studio in the Los Angeles hills, where the rest of the record was completed in just ten days. As the songs filled out, Friedberger went full-out in immersing herself in her romantic vision of that city. "I was just listening to Fleetwood Mac and Neil Young, driving around in a borrowed Prius," she says. "Walking along Point Dume, playing tennis at Griffith Park.... I ate hippie food every day. Lots of lentils."

The sun-warmed languor of the West Coast and its golden age of rock 'n' roll shines through in Personal Record. It's the aural equivalent of an afternoon jaunt up the PCH in an orange BMW 2002, fist pumping into the wind. "When I Knew" and "Stare at the Sun" rock out like the Furnaces' finest, but with that unmistakable Eleanor gracefulness. "Echo or Encore" is a lilting love ballad underlaid with with a bossa nova beat. "I Am the Past" evokes the mystical side of the Me Decade with meandering bass clarinet and a balls-out flute solo (seriously). Though Friedberger may harbor a bit of a '70s fetish, there's an idiosyncrasy and intimacy to her music that's undeniably modern. Above all, it's pretty. "It's such a romantic album to me," Friedberger says. "But more so than love for another person, it's really about a love of music."