A. Savage the Parquet Courts frontman has made “Several Songs About Fire” in Bristol, supported by singer/composer Jack Cooper and Welsh firebrand Cate Le Bon, who recently lent her production skills to Wilco’s phonetically-intricate “Cousin”. Savage’s topics sprawl from meditations on family and friends to indictments on modern society and nostalgia for a dangerous, masculinized Old West.
If it is anything, “Several Songs About Fire” is meticulously planned out: A brooding, flippant, precocious album that, in its best moments, roars to life in flickers of swelling guitars, burning harmonics and ingenious witticisms. At times, though, the album’s kindling fails to keep it alight, and it fades low under the weight of its own erudition. Andrew “A.” Savage’s voice is unmissable, iconic and, dare I say it, generational. So few singers or poets have soundtracked my life more viscerally than he has, be it via his 2017 debut “Thawing Dawn” or, honestly, anything he’s made across 11 years fronting Parquet Courts.
He hops from genre to genre with swift deftness, signalling a familiarity with musical stylings from ‘90s Brit-rock on the brash, lively “Elvis in the Army” to acoustic ‘60’s folk on the softly contemplative “Hurtin’ or Healed.” His lyrics are colourful and heady, hinting at the sort of lone-wolf singer-songwriter persona Savage is working toward. There’s no doubt that Savage has the ability to tap into real musical profundity, the kind you can’t fake or half-ass. And, when he moulds that depth correctly, the results are mountainous.
His singing, it’s gritty and harbouring chaos even when it’s presented as subdued and gentle; when he croons across tracks like “Eyeballs” and “Buffalo Calf Road,” you can hear the punk atoms coalescing with a rewarding branch of delicacy.
Savage had this to say about “David’s Dead” in a press release: “What can I say about the song ‘David’s Dead?’ Well I can tell you that it’s a portrait of the block in New York City that I called home for over a decade, each line sort of a tally of things that had changed in that time. I can tell you that David’s passing made some of those changes much more evident than they were before. I can tell you that the last time I saw David I bought him both a black coffee and a can of Crazy Stallion, and that we drank a coffee together on my stoop, but I said ‘see ya later’ when he cracked open the tallboy.”
His instrumentals, especially a frequently-wielded acoustic guitar, swell and ebb with a feeling of utter talent, folksy and thought-out without veering nihilistic. His dips into sonic maximalism are triumphs (All Hail Ms. Le Bon!), and his breadth of musical styling is undeniably impressive. Savage embraces his precocity rather than veiling it in an honest, Silver Jews-y way that mostly reads experienced rather than egomaniacal. “Several Songs About Fire” is a bold creative endeavor, and one I think I can deem a triumph. At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning. It is also, at times, simpering and molasses-y, when Savage has proven he knows how to succeed without shackling himself to those tropes. When it burns low, its ashes are suffocating—but when it flares, it blazes high, “Several Songs About Fire” is exactly the type of solo record you should want from someone like Savage; it’s got sonics not too distant from those of Parquet Courts, but there are intricacies and small details that make it obvious just how dense of a world he’s built on his own. It’s the perfect spectrum of push and pull, “Several Songs About Fire” is a bold creative endeavor, and one I think I can deem a triumph. At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning.
The Fat Angel Sings 