Calm down, folks; this song will not change your life. There’s not a hint of the “new ‘combined’ style” that Jagjaguwar insists will sound “like nothing else” when Beast Moans is finally unleashed come November. Neither a seismic shift in songwriting approach, nor the apotheosis to date of the works of any of those involved (Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and Wolf Parade/Sunset Rubdown’s Spencer Krug), “All Fires” initially strikes one as tepid Krug-by-numbers -- its hazy day, muffled atmosphere splintering, rather than synergising, the surrounding ragamuffin fragmentary drum and organ sounds.

Repeated listening defines the focal guitar point more resolutely; the unwavering strums act as centre of gravity for this spooky death-march, the steady axis upon which the song’s lyrics are spun out. The heady blend of impressionistic tableaux and poetic axioms will not leave anyone familiar with Spencer’s work too surprised. The noticeably constricted and tempered approach adopted, though, casts into sharper relief the luminous, and highly memorable prevailing motif -- “All fires have to burn alive / to live” -- inseparable from exhausted, dying embers of the backing track, lavished with the sinusoidal guitar tone and totem percussion characteristic of Frog Eyes’ sound.

So it’s really good, essentially. Fact is, though, as a sampler seemingly produced to elicit confused expression and flustered questions (like, where exactly does Bejar fit into all this?), it pulls of the ultimate gambit in both stemming the hyperbole and preserving the preconceived certainty that this supergroup is actually going to deliver.

permanent link ::