Review Summary: Comparing The Fire Theft to Sunny Day Real Estate is a mistake. Jeremy, Nate and William’s songwriting has matured and evolved hugely over their years of experience and they are now capable of writing an adventurous album exploring indie rock
So I picked up this album for two dollars at a local second-hand record shop and I based my purchase basically entirely on the fact that it is a sort off spin-off from Sunny Day Real Estate, who are known for being pretty much the founders of Emo music.
The first thing you notice when listening to The Fire Theft is the involvement of an orchestra amongst Jeremy gentle, airy vocals and often confusing lyrics. It’s odd to see the lads from the emo days making such mature indie-rock with classical inspiration here and there, but it’s what you should expect from people with such experience in a rather intense scene that clearly have an urge to writing more family-friendly music if you like. This time it seems to be more about the music than ever. Uncle Mountain is a powerful opener that slowly dies off almost without notice and leads into a segue centred by an echoey piano. A segue? Jeremy Enigk? Trust me it’s not just trying to be an unusual touch, it’s majestic, freeing and simply beautiful.
Oceans Apart is an absolute winner. It builds and builds till it just charges on like that scene in the new Terminator movie with the truck, and gains so much momentum it feels like it'll never stop. It has a rather slow tempo making the drum track very obnoxious but powerful, until it slowly evolves until the cymbals become the waves the song is riding on. Everything about this song is pleasing and impressive. It doesn’t change a whole lot but it's strength gives a sense that the song has a careless and lively attitude with dynamics from across the board.
The next song that is intriguing is Backwards Blues. I’m not sure what this is, an instrumental-segue-jam-song-thing. It sounds like someone’s having some serious fun with guitar pedals while William Goldsmith’s probably bored on the drums. I tried to get used to it, but I feel like it doesn’t really fit too well with the rest of the album. Points for creativity though I guess.
The second half of the album features pretty much everything you’d expect from a dynamic indie-rock album. Heaven, well a pretty standard song title, but it turns out to be a song of powerful beauty. A strong love song that sends chills down my spine and lifts me to wherever Jeremy is talking about, so I don’t think this is a song you can forget easily. There’s also an almost entirely instrumental rock track; Rubber Bands seems to be showing off the amazing sound of the album, especially the drum sound, it has to be one of my favourite albums for drum recording ever. An incredibly natural and not overly altered or compressed sounding snare and toms with a cymbal sound that sounds like it could open the heavens.
Finally, Sinatra closes the album. A fourteen minute track that only really stays alive for about six minutes, nonetheless a strong and clever end, not in a drop the microphone type way, but in a slowly close the curtains and receive a heroic clap type way. The ending feels so satisfying you want to listen to the whole album again just so you can heard it build up to the ending.
