FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| CD REVIEWS FIREWATER · New project from former Cop Shoot Cop member, Tod A. Doors singer Jim Morrison had a knack for making statements that ran the gamut from sublime to asinine, but when he said in an interview, "People should learn to carry their pain, like a radio," he was at his cryptic best. Firewater blow the speakers out on that radio, a radio that's plugged into a cellblock where "All her ghosts still hang around to wreck the party," a cell that echoes with the question, "How many times do I have to lie/ Before you believe me?" And while the songs try to find a path through a world where counterfeit words rain down upon an emotional drought, where unfaithful lovers derail lives like a train wreck and tomorrow's already blown away, cello, violin, and brass hold a match up to the roadmap. Whether it's to see it in the dark or burn it to oblivion is unclear. Although Tod A. could better be labeled a vocalist than a singer, his voice is perfect: perfectly desperate, perfectly dour, twitching with the sound of a smile playing across his face even as he sings of another perfect catastrophe. And yet there is a humor here, a smartmouth that gets a laugh even as it lips off death. A carnivalesque feel prevails, but when the circus is over and the freaks go home, they read the classics and use hard tunes and hard liquor to salve hard lives. This album is a perfect catastrophe indeed. 5/5 |