Review Summary: A lone album that's testament to a lot of unfilled potential but as testaments go, this is a pretty good one.
Judging by Colour of Fire's debut album they could have been anything they wanted. They could have been the next Radiohead, they could have been the next Foo Fighters or they could have been the next Placebo. Instead they broke up, leaving only this album as a record of a remarkable breadth of talent and potential which is limited by a certain lack of focus and maturity (such as in the album title).
Pearl Necklace dips into the various genres of rock, picking out elements of metal, grunge, emo and indie but steadfastly refuses to limit itself to any of them. The album isn't wildly experimental, there are no Mars Volta experiments of prog rock or instrumental orchestras here but in more of an At The Drive-In style there's a lot of experimentation within the confines of the genre. What enables it to do this is the range of front man Owen Richard's voice which can go from falsetto to raspy shout any moment but possesses a certain youthful, thin timbre (think Matt Bellamy in his younger years but more of a punk bent) which actually fits quite well with the other unifying factor of this set of songs, the anger that pervades each one of them. The band then adapts well to each, providing metallic pounding riffs, spiky rythms or a laid back drifting sound as required. The changes can be abrupt as between the drifting Radiohead like sound of 'Images of You' to the grungily vicious 'A Pearl Necklace for Her Majesty'. This lends the album a slightly disjointed atmosphere but there's enough common elements between each song not to disturb the flow of invective Colour of Fire provide. And there's an awful lot of it because Owen Richards is quite an angry young man with vitriol to spare for society in general such as in Second Class Citizen ('I'm awake in the world of a second class citizen/Approach with caution then lead me into chaos/Awake in the world of a military prison'), himself in A Couple of Reasons (I'm always picking all the faults in the world/Now every animal I kill is a failure) or at a formerly beloved.
While being angry is hardly unique to Richards the ways he expresses it are happily varied and competent. His clean singing and occasional forays into falsetto are just as venomous as his screams and shouts and each song has it's own distinct character. This album is like most debuts, full of ideas and in fact it would have been quite nice if the band had sat down and expanded on some of them instead of simply moving on to the next. This 'don't stop, keep moving' style makes the album an exhilarating but slightly limited journey, a roller coaster rather than a ferris wheel, with the same blurred view. However none of these bursts of sound are poorly done, each is an exemplary piece of music that come together to form a whole slightly less than the sum of it's parts.
Colour of Fire clearly had the maturity to think about the timing and structure of the songs and though the songs do follow fairly standard chorus - verse - chorus format each provides it's own crescendos and little flourishes such as the patient build up of soft vocals over building drums and guitar in 'The Company Won't Colour Me' for over 2 and a half minutes before exploding or the backing shrieks in 'The Exile' (which should sound awful but instead manage to enhance the song immeasurably) and clearly the band knows their instruments well. Unfortunately this depth of thought in song craft isn't quite replicated in the lyrics. Though the images the lyrics provoke are undeniably powerful due to their delivery they have a certain vagueness of intent that makes it hard to really admire them. Richards is angry but about what exactly? It's hard to believe his fury in 'A Pearl Necklace for Her Majesty' is really funneled at our nation's favourite grandmother and this lack of focus in the lyrics echoes the album as a whole.
It's a great shame that Colour of Fire broke up because judging by this album they had the ability to take any facet of their music and really produce something magnificent and instead we're left with an album of individually great songs that don't combine to be what they should. However it's still an invigorating and rewarding listen.
