The Date: somewhere near the end of summer 2002
The Location: Middle of Missouri
The Show: 2 hour drive away
The Band: The Fire Show
Here I am, summer school waiting for me the next morning and I decided against making that 2 hour drive. At the time, I had only heard a few songs by The Fire Show, all off of their debut album. They weren’t bad, but at the time they weren’t worth a 2 hour drive.
And now I bang my head against the wall every time I think about it. Why? Why? Why?
I should have gone.
Now it’s late Fall 2002, and I own The Fire Show’s new album Saint The Fire Show and I love it. It hasn’t left my cd player for two months. And to add more pain to my aching head The Fire Show no longer exists. They are done. Three albums and they will play no more. They only exist on a cd now. And I missed them!
The Fire Show are a band like none other; a threesome from Chicago playing extremely dense and dynamic art punk music. In the year 2002 they came out with two albums, this last one and Above the Volcano of Flowers. Above was a mix of art-punk and IDM. While this album, Saint the Fire Show, has them going back and forth between art-punk and folk; something that shouldn’t work, but does.
Take the wonderful Moon & Antarctica by Modest Mouse but add more violins, pianos, synths, samples and a nicer voice and you may be on the right path to discovering The Fire Show’s style. But even that description does not give this album its due.
The album starts off with the minimal ‘The Making Of Dead Hollow’, which begins quietly with only lead singer M. Resplendent’s voice, and stays that way for about 3 minutes with the exception of a few violin and drum samples. But while the first 3 minutes are practically a cappella, it quickly leads into a very dark chant of ‘Dead Hollow’ with dark dense drums, guitars and a wave of distortion in the forefront for the rest of the song. And that is what I love about this album. It never stays the same. With three of the ten songs (two of the ten being short interludes) being over six minutes, one over five and the rest over four minutes, the songs never get old or stale. The only song on the whole cd that maintains its pace would be the final song: ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ Yes, the very same ‘You Are My Sunshine’ that Elijah Wood sang from a tree to a girl standing in her window in the movie ‘Forever Young’ (and yes I know the song was around before that movie). The version they do of this song is simply heart breaking.
I have never heard a band quite like The Fire Show. Why can’t more bands like this exist? Damn them for breaking up!
I should have gone to that show.
- Tyler Craft
