Your Music Sucks

Firewater first hit my radar back in 1998 or so, I didn’t know much about them, but I had Soul Coughing’s album “El Oso” on repeat at the time and I read somewhere that their drummer, Yuval Gubay, had collaborated on a new Firewater album called “The Ponzi Scheme”. Seemed interesting enough, but I never gave it much thought until one day I wandered over to HMV on my lunch break and saw a few copies of the CD packaged in a metal container with a limited edition sticker splashed across the front. I’m a sucker for anything “limited edition”, so I couldn’t get my money out my pocket fast enough, you never knew when a rush was going to come and make them all collectors items.

The album was a personal favorite for awhile, “Green Light” and “Whistling In The Dark” were two of the standouts on an album that was surprisingly accessible rock and roll for a band incorporating strings and a horn section. Lyrics like “going down like a pederast in a boy’s school”, may not have ingratiated them to the Catholic community, but they sure were fun to listen to. As is my norm, I eventually moved on to listening to something else and I honestly forgot all about these guys until I read online a few weeks ago that they were touring in support of a new album, “The Golden Hour”.

Inspired by Tod A’s travels and reasons therefore, the new album is overtly political (possibly a bit ham-fistedly on a song like “Hey Clown”) but packaged thoughtfully with lyrics that accessorize the fusion of sounds pulled from around the globe. I immediately thought of Joe Strummer’s “Streetcore” record when I first heard “The Golden Hour”, Tod’s vocal delivery is uncannily similar to Joe’s, and the music is running a parallel path to the direction Strummer was going in his solo career.