ARTiST: Seachange
TiTLE: On Fire, With Love
LABEL: Glitterhouse
GENRE: Indie
TiME: 40:46 min
SiZE: 65,2 MB
BiTRATE: VBRkbps
RiP DATE: Jun-06-2006
RELEASE DATE: May-26-2006
WEBSiTE: n/a
Track List:
01. Annie, Tacoma 03:00
02. Battlegrounds 05:19
03. No Backward Glances 03:57
04. Anti-Story 03:26
05. The Key 03:17
06. Shooting Arrows 02:47
07. Youth And Art 03:34
08. Christmas Letters 03:06
09. Midsummer Fires 03:29
10. Punch And Judy 03:08
11. In 05:43
Release Notes:
A Short History of On Fire, With Love
On Fire, With Love is the second album from
Seachange and it has been 2 years in the making. Let
us go back a bit first though. 2004, the year of
living dangerously. Lay of the Land is released.
Seachange spend the year touring the world, building
up a reputation for electric and spontaneous live
shows, trailblazing through America with Guided by
Voices and Pretty Girls Make Graves. In Germany,
Dave duels on guitar with a hairy man from
Schorndorf and Electrelane join them on stage for an
impromptu finale of Bronski BeatÆs ôSmall town boyö
in Hamburg.
Back in Nottingham, the band regroups. A year of
playing intense music at an intense pace has taken
its toll. They lock themselves away in First Love,
their studio, practice space and artistic hideaway,
to write some quiet songs, rediscovering their folk
roots and reacquainting themselves with Nottingham.
These songs are debuted at the GreenÆs Mill Old
School Hall, Sneinton, in December 2004. Candles and
holly adorn the beautiful old building and people
toast the quieter-sounding Seachange with mulled
wine. DonÆt be fooled into thinking that the desire
to play loud music had ever left them though; it
simply needed to be augmented and given a fresh
perspective. And so an idea formed: Why not write a
double album? One album of songs that had made up
the GreenÆs Mill gig and one album of new, louder
and brighter songs.
With this deceptively simple idea in mind, the band
decamped to Cornwall with Glaswegian producer Tony
Doogan (Mogwai, Delgados) to record their next
record. In a remote farmhouse, in close quarters,
the band was in its element, and the recordings were
bearing fruit. From these sessions came the haunting
ôAnti-storyö, the bracing 100-miles an hour whiplash
of ôNo Backward Glancesö the power pop anthem
öChristmas Lettersö and perhaps the highlight of the
whole record, ôInö, a catchy stream-of-consciousness
lyric wedded to an utterly infectious guitar riff .
However, they soon realised the ambitiousness of the
project they had set themselves and two records in
three weeks proved to be too great a task. It was
clear they needed to return to the artistic cocoon
of First Love and that some fresh impetus was
needed.
The band jettisoned the double-album idea and
enlisted the help of NottinghamÆs answer to Jim
OÆRourke, Neil Wells (Savoy Grand, Escapologists,
Line) and co-producer Pete Fletcher
(Escapologists).They spent the remainder of 2005
back in First LoveÆs familiar surroundings with
heads down, fine-tuning what would become On Fire,
With Love. New band member, Neil Wells added many
textures to the new recordings, from the cornet
blasts that punctuate ôAnnie, Tacomaö to the
crunching guitar at the end of ôThe Keyö and the
band were able to accommodate some of their quieter
songs to great effect: ôMidsummerö, ôPunch and
Judyö, ôShooting Arrowsö. An old Robert Browning
poem was resurrected for ôYouth and Artö and a
howling great banshee of a rock song,
ôBattlegroundö, was added as the final piece in the
puzzle.
On Fire, With Love in Wordsà. Annie, Tacoma is all
light-footed, like two birds in a bizarre courting
ritual, all posture, proud feathers and knowing
looksàa goofball swirl, like parlour games, cute
business, and all the stuff you can try out and get
away with when your fooling around and its no big
deal û like trying on clothes, or masks for the ball
û just donÆt get burned playing with fire! Ouch!àNo
Backward Glances careers through a handful of years,
a celebration of someone and the time by their side,
the affair a firework bound to explode and fall into
the moonlit millpond of Anti-Story, a sad/funny
glance back at fantasies cracking, memories
fragmenting and reality kickingàShooting Arrows a
æshot to the heart and youÆre to blame,Æ that moment
when the spell breaks and you realise its over and
all you can hear is screeching cars, far off lovers
and questions, questions ringing in your
earsàartistic ambition is the force keeping the
lovers of Youth and Art apart; but through their
failure to see the connection between art and life,
the former has betrayed them to trivialityàlove is
blasted by a weakness of will, worldly prudence and
the potential lovers are irretrievably marred, love
letters are returned and thrown onto the
fireàMidsummer jumps back to a longest day of
spell-setting, meadow-dancing, innocent moon-eyed
peering into an uncertain futureàa fine time in the
sun, a passing moment, the lifespan of a fireàand
then In moves in, a rambling unsent love letter, a
plea, a promise, tongue-in cheek but every word
meant, yearning, waitingàon fire, with love.