PRESS
Fire On Fire/Popmatters.com review
popmatters.com/Matthew Fiander
The Orchard is the sound of a group full of life, playing music full of an earthen stomp and a cautious hope. If it sounds melancholy in spots, it is because their joy is an honest one, a murkily human one. And if it sounds eccentric, it is because it is unique. These players have made a lot of sounds over the years. But with The Orchard, they might have found the sound they were supposed to be making all along.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/70376-fire-on-fire-the-orchard/
Popmatters.com
25 March 2009
Fire on Fire
The Orchard
(Young God)
By Matthew Fiander
There’s plenty of new folk floating around these days. Plenty of it is quite
good, but most of it tends to mine folk for its melancholy and eccentricity.
Some find joy in the transience of the sound, in not being tied down, but
few artists use folk to meld any permanence of place with feelings outside
of loss and loneliness.
That is where Fire on Fire comes in. The collective comes from Portland,
Maine and has taken on many different faces over the years. They used to be
the electric-noise experimenters Cerberus Shoal, and then they became the
more organic Big Blood before morphing into Fire on Fire. After releasing a
great self-titled EP on Young God Records, the band has released its first
full-length, The Orchard, quickly proving themselves to be a group deserving
of more attention, both in folk circles and beyond.
The Orchard starts off with “Sirocco” and immediately announces the group’s
intentions. Like the rest of the album, the song populates itself with all
acoustic instruments. Stand-up bass, guitar, mandolin, banjo, accordion,
etc., make a sturdy shuffling noise behind the full-throated vocals. The
whole group comes in to sing the chorus, belting out what seems like a
mantra for Fire on Fire: “If we tear this kingdom down / Let it be with a
deserving and joyous sound.” The sentiment implies an anger, surely, or at
least a discomfort with things as they are, but the members of Fire on Fire
aren’t dragged down to frustration by the things they disagree with. Instead
they galvanize and hold onto their joy, and use it as a weapon.
The feeling of living life your way, of making the world better by making
the space around you great, is a feeling running through The Orchard. And
while, in print, it feels overly sentimental and naive, it never sounds that
way on this record. It is not all flowers in your hair and group hugs or
self-righteous soapbox shouting. “Asinine Race” wonders over the connection
between gender roles and identity but avoids being high-minded by filtering
that idea through the universal, and admittedly whiny, feeling our families
drive us crazy. “Hartford Blues” is tense with frustration, well known in
places like New England, as the oncoming winter begins to make the air
bitter, but a sense of place also exists, of not wanting to leave, of being
a part of a community that fights against the singer’s complaints. A
bittersweet song, it has a dedication to it that makes road songs seem, if
for a moment, just a little too easy, a little less romantic.
And that is what makes the overarching contentment of The Orchard work. It
never ignores other emotions. The group sounds most unmoored on the
strangely named “Heavy D.” “Some like the distance / Some like the nothing,”
they sing on the chorus. A space around these lines makes them sound
confused, disconnected. Fire on Fire seem ready to accept that kind of
fatalism, but they can’t quite figure it out, but a yearning in its sound
makes it feel like they’re always reaching out for what they don’t
understand rather than turning away from it.
If one thing remains clear on The Orchard, it is that Fire on Fire is not a
band but a collective. These players sound like they’re playing to each
other as much as to us. They take turns singing the leads. They all wrote
songs for the album, and because of that, the feel of the album never quite
settles. Even as the sound feels similar all the way through, the way they
trade instruments and singing duties keeps the listener on his or her toes.
And their brand of folk music never becomes fey or precious. The Orchard is
the sound of a group full of life, playing music full of an earthen stomp
and a cautious hope. If it sounds melancholy in spots, it is because their
joy is an honest one, a murkily human one. And if it sounds eccentric, it is
because it is unique. These players have made a lot of sounds over the
years. But with The Orchard, they might have found the sound they were
supposed to be making all along.