FIRE ON FIRE – THE ORCHARD
It is an appropriate name for this band Fire on Fire – for their Appalachian tales of justice and family and lost love and life burn like a forest fire – slowly eating away at your ears with a raucous insistency. This is their first full-length record on American label Young God Records, who house such talent as James Blackshaw and the unstoppable king of freak-folk, Devendra Banhart. What these guys are doing is a little removed from the “freaky” psychedelic tendencies of the new folk movement, instead harbouring a deep and raw spirit of the downtrodden masses in their simple folk songs. There is something highly traditional in the writing of this material, but delivered with a very present and thrilling raggedness and a focus on tight-knit harmonies. The elegiac Sirocco wails like the ghosts in Neil Young’s barn archives, and the fantastically spooky The Orchard calls upon the spirit of two lost sisters as they harmonise to their world’s end. At times the music rises above the folky as well, to engorge the listener in chaotic explosions of acoustic strings tested to breaking point, and the clanging of barnyard implements. This is spatial, exciting stuff, once you’re on board you don’t feel like getting off.
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