Fire on Fire - The Orchard (Young God Records, 2008)

1 Sirocco (5:09)
2 Heavy D (4:31)
3 Assanine Race (6:24)
4 The Orchard (4:07)
5 Flordinese (5:28)
6 Hartford Blues (3:31)
7 Toknight (6:12)
8 Squeeze Box (4:13)
9 Flight Song (4:23)
10 Grin (5:02)
11 Tsunami (4:44)
12 Haystack (8:37)

Avec la percée en cette fin d'année d'un groupe tel que Fleet Foxes, on se dit que Fire On Fire n'a pas beaucoup de chance. Car si White Winter Hymnal avait placé les Foxes bien haut, il faut dire que la suite est loin d'attendre les mêmes sommets, allant même parfois jusqu'à sentir le mauvais CSN&Y. C'est tout l'inverse chez Fire On Fire, dont l'album ne contient pas beaucoup de titres marquants, mais qui ne met pas moins une sacrée claque. Facile ici d'y voir la sempiternelle vague revival folk avec instrumentation à l'ancienne (dobro, guitare acoustique, harmonium, banjo, mandoline, etc) et les inmanquables harmonies vocales, mais il sera bien plus dur à l'écoute de The Orchad de se dire que ce groupe n'est autre que la suite de Cerberus Shoal !

Visiblement défaits de leurs instruments électriques et de leurs diverses substances psychotropes (que ce disque est posé et paisible...), les membres du groupe (parmi lesquels figure Micah Blue Smaldone) n'en ont pas moins gardé leur habitude de vivre en communauté, ce qui s'entend à merveille sur le disque.

Chacun mettant la main à la patte pour les parties vocales, Fire On Fire réalise un album presque en dehors des âges (est-ce du bluegrass ? Est-ce du folk ? Du folk des Appalaches ? Du psychédélisme acoustique ? Est-ce bien important après tout ?). La douceur des arpèges acoustiques répond avec justesse au minimalisme des autres instruments en une osmose réconfortante qui s'impose en toute discrétion.

Tout cela confirmera une nouvelle fois la sûreté des goûts de Michael Gira, qui après Akron/Family ou ses Angels Of Light, propose une nouvelle fois un groupe irréprochable sur le catalogue de son label Young God.

Webzine Mille-Feuilles

For anyone who has experienced the genre-bending and ranging music of Cerberus Shoal any time in the past decade, this rebirth known as Fire on Fire should come as no surprise. That band seemed to make a habit of reinventing their sound every couple of years or so (or evolving might be a better word). A band that required loyalty and a healthy sense of wanderlust and adventure.

With Fire on Fire they’ve done it again, or some of them anyway, but this time unplugged and firmly entrenched somewhere in a dimension far removed from those musical roots. The trappings now are rough-hewn and varnished implements: guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, upright bass, accordion; plucked, strummed, pressed and purposefully bowed. But bubbling under the surface and woven in the words, that genesis of youth and anger and cynicism and sense of irony and sarcasm blend with newfound purpose like dandelion wine, and into something that wets the palette but leaves behind an aftertaste of bittersweet satisfaction. This is music for folks who may not be ready to stop being contrary and skeptical, but who have matured to a point where those emotions can be effectively channeled into something useful.

Right out in front of the toe-tapping acid bluegrass and new-generation Americana folk instrumental arrangements the band lays out a rich layer of vocal harmonies that’ll keep your ears glued to your iPod or Media Player or car stereo or to whatever portal-to-your-soul of choice this CD happens to land in. I’ve a bit of a soft-spot for sincere folk music (and what folk music isn’t sincere)? But this ain’t folk any more than Neil Young is a country singer. We’ve gone beyond that and more. The dirge-like apocalyptic lament “Sirocco” with its hypnotic fiddle and unrelenting bass lays a trance-like bed on which something akin to a post-apocalyptic and sickly gleeful chant issues forth: “and if we tear this kingdom down (tear it down!), let it be with a deserving and joyful sound”. I suppose this is close to what A Silver Mt Zion might have sounded like if they’d grown up just south of the border instead of on Mile End Street. And with a keener sense of harmony.

The years of experimentation and experience manifest all over this album, from the plucking bluegrass-tinged title track to the Jesus-freak throwback “Toknight” to Colleen Kinsella’s chilling vocals on the accordion tribute “Squeeze Box” to the all-acoustic post-rock (did I just say acoustic post-rock?) “Haystack”. An enchanting closer to a stunningly engaging album. All I can do at this point is hope like hell these guys somehow wind their way to South Dakota USA so I can see them live. Not likely, but you never know.

Musicgeek

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Fire On Fire - 5 Song EP (Young God Records, 2007)

1		Hangman (4:30)
2		Liberty Unknown (6:56)
3		My Lady Coffin (7:10)
4		Amnesia (4:32)
5		Three Or More (8:12)

Over the years, Young God's Michael Gira has unearthed a succession of really interesting young artists and bands – Calla, Devendra Banhart, Akron/Family and Mi and L’au so far – and helped them, in almost every case, to record the best work of their respective careers. Banhart, for all his media accolades, has not topped Rejoicing in the Hands; Akron/Family will have a tough time outdoing their split with Angels of Light; Calla's landmark remains Televised. As for Mi and L'au, well, who knows if they will ever follow up on their self-titled debut? Living in a log cabin with a fashion model-type significant other is surely a bit distracting.

In any case, when Gira announces that he's found a new band, it's a good idea to take notice. His latest discovery is Fire on Fire.

Fire on Fire doesn't quite start with a blank slate. The band's core was mostly together in Cerberus Shoal, a Maine new folk outfit, whose celebratory, otherworldly shows mixed old-time purity with curiously theatrical performance art. During their nine-album, decade-long run, they toured a good deal with fellow Mainer Micah Blue Smalldone, a guitarist and banjo player with two exquisite acoustic folk solo records. They are all members of a Maine-based outré Americana enclave, fond of twisting the sounds of unamplified instruments like banjo, string bass and found percussion in surreal non-traditional ways. (Death Vessel's Joel Thibodeaux also came out of this scene.)

Fire on Fire's first recording, a self-titled EP, is a tantalizing glimpse of the new band's possibilities, five distinctly different songs united mostly by instrumentation and a weirdly offbeat kind of rural sincerity. The opening track, "Hangman," is the one they're focusing on (hence the mp3 above), yet in some ways the least interesting. It's trebly and trembly, all glistening vibrato on high guitar strings and an insanely communal, octave leaping, all-hands chorus. There's some sort of epiglottal thing going on in the singing, a vibration that sounds like everyone's furiously rubbing their adam's apple on the sustained notes. The words are skewed and full of new hippy dark optimism, all about everybody needing friends, because "even the worst of men, even the hangman has friends." Just listening is like slipping into the clutches of some sort of cult; start to sing along and you're lost.

And yet, "Hangman" is not the best of these five songs. For that honor, I'd vote for the slow, liquidly beautiful "Liberty Unknown." It's based in slow 12/8, a three-based guitar motif twinkling in the background, as singer Colleen Kinsella stretches out the long pure notes of the melody. There's a wild thread of piping that runs through the song, not quite a flute, maybe a recorder that gives it an especially untamed heft. It might even be a political song, touching obliquely on the need for consciousness and protest in lyrics like "We fought with our lungs, we fought with our lungs," intoned over and over again in a dream-like background. It's a gorgeous song and not really alt.country or alt.folk at all.

"My Lady Coffin" and "Amnesia" stick closer to the pre-industrial America formula, the first plucked out on guitar and eased by strings, the second rollicking along on accordion blurts and junk percussion. Yet even when the music passes, almost, for Folkways traditional, the words are skewed like funhouse mirrors. "My Lady Coffin" is full of natural images, sung in wavery, antique harmonies, and yet so far warped from any expected folk song sentiment as to be almost disconcerting. Consider the stanza about aging, family and the circle of life: "The kids are crazy/They're always cryin'/The parents continue multiplying/Digging dirt and laying their seed/Oh it's so much fun to breed." Not exactly shoring up our nation's traditional values, are they?

The EP closes with its longest cut, the eerily laid-back "Three or More." The song takes its time getting going, banjo, guitar and slide bending their notes into a serene interlocked pattern, bobbing along. It's almost a minute before the vocals come in, two before the song resolves into any sort of chorus. Yet far from growing tedious, the groove becomes reassuring and comfortable. You can feel the band members relax into one another's playing, feeling it, in no rush to bring things to climax. And maybe this – more than their non-electrified instruments, their country harmonies, their birds and trees imagery – is what this band has in common with traditional folk. They have all the time in the world to bring this song off. Why hurry?

By Jennifer Kelly, Dusted Review


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