Review Summary: self-awareness
I don’t think our best memories are ever actually as good as we remember them. Maybe that's an overly jaded view, but I doubt I’m alone here. I think Ceremony believe that too, and that
Rocket Fire is their document of proof. It’s all those sun bleached days of summers past, the windows rolled down, the stereo cranked up, the flitters of joy, romance, freedom, catharsis - all viewed through the blurry lens of a faulty prescription. The moment to moment is lost, the details have been forged. Everything which remains has been diluted.
This clouded array is the simple product of two Virginia dudes with guitars, a drum machine, and a healthy dose of influences a la ‘80s heroes (The Jesus and Mary Chain, for one, immediately spring to mind).
Rocket Fire is every caustic quality of noise rock channeled into a blend of swirly, cotton candy sweetness - though that’s not to say it doesn’t still retain a nasty snarl in its lip. The duo consistently use a thick, crackling layer of distortion to cleverly mask their infectious hooks (“Marianne”), create noisy rapport (“Never Make You Cry”) or to just tear the whole damn thing apart entirely (“Don’t Leave Me Behind”). The affair is decidedly lo-fi, never allowing us enough clarity to really see what lies beneath the clamor, other than the quietly sparkling guitar and detached vocal melodies that fit snugly within the haze. But, do we really need to know anything more?
Rocket Fire is content with obscuring our memories and revising our perception, with choosing fiction over fact, expression over exposition. What we’re left with is all we want, and maybe that’s all we need.
