The Firebird Band - The City at Night (2004) [V0]

  Released: 2004
  Genre: Pop/Rock
  Style: Indie, Alternative, Indie Electronic
  Codec: MP3
  Bit Rate: V0 VBR
  
  Electronic means to making music are, for most of their operators, still quite a novelty. Sure, there are DJ types who’ve been smashing bytes together for generations and a handful of enterprising indie acts whose laptronica bridged the gap between the digital and the meat world with varying degrees of success, but for the most part, bands who play instruments haven’t been quite as comfortable with the world of programming.

The Firebird Band joins the ranks of a rare few artists – most notably Blusom and Joan of Arc – that are over electronic music’s novelty. With The City at Night, the band blends its organic and electronic parts so seamlessly that it’s downright impossible to separate the two anywhere in the mix. Where everyone from your friendly neighborhood industrial act to electroclash and dance-punk hipsters have thrown guitars on a lumpy mattress of big beats, samples and weird noises, it’s always been an uncomfortable union: Here’s the rock, here’s the techno – make sure they don’t mix.

The Firebird Band gets the metaphorical peanut butter and chocolate all mixed up on The City at Night with vast soundscapes where atmospheric electronics loom large in the background while processed noises and tweaked guitar sounds play with voices and traditional guitars without making a fuss over it. The band’s songs are so blended, layered and atmospheric, it’s nearly impossible to separate any individual elements from the song as a whole, not because of poor production, but simply because The City at Night’s songs are so tightly crafted everything must be taken on its own.

“Obsessive Compulsion” opens the album with synthetic squeaks and squawks, and then forceful beats and singer Christopher Broach’s staccato delivery quickly join it. It’s a mix of gritty, here-and-now songwriting and introspective programming that splits the difference between Kid A and Danse Macabre. In “Los Angeles,” The Firebird Band opts to concentrate more upon atmosphere, as a wall of distorted, tricked-up guitars provide little more than noise-pollution atmosphere that fogs dance-floor beats and Broach’s deadpan delivery, only to break into minimalist chunks of spooky programming. “Tokyo” sets aside much of the band’s programming for a song that’s essentially just voice and piano, with murky atmospheric bits making the minimal arrangement all the more haunting.

The City at Night is an album that’s more about atmospheres and mood than song-based indietronica acts. Then again, it isn’t nearly as textured and atmospheric as albums by Radiohead or Blusom, acts infatuated by a ProTools rig. The Firebird Band definitely knows its way around a virtual mixing board, however, which makes its venture into elecro-rock an interesting one, even if it doesn’t toe the dance-punk or post-rock lines.