3 out of 5

Label: Matador

Produced by: Steve Albini

It’s time for me to face facts: I don’t consider Firewater one of Silkworm’s best albums.  When I was just starting to explore independent music, Matador was one of the first labels I ran across as a common in several releases of note, and thus one of the first labels I sort of blindly followed.  Nevermind that I had no idea that the label release list was already massive (this was probably ’99 or ’00); nevermind that I hadn’t yet honed my random album-hunting skills; if it had Matador on the packaging – as I combed without direction through artist names at Vintage Vinyl or Streetside Records – chances were I’d pick it up.

And that was Firewater, my first Silkworm purchase.  The weird album art (still an oddball amongst their releases to this day) stuck out, and I felt further justified in my whimsical purchase by seeing Albini’s name on the production credits (again, neverminding my unawareness that he had produced a gazillion things by that point).

And that was also a Matador purchase that went into the rarely-listened-to pile.  Coming off of mainstream hardcore like System or Rage and then diverting into less mainstream punk/ska music, I didn’t really have the ears yet for Silkworm’s brand of barebones rawk, but I read the reviews, and knew the album was supposed to be some kind of A plus genius, so it stayed in my collection.  To maintain consistency with future me, I recall liking the opening tracks – the abrasive rattle of Nerves, the drunken tale of, Drunk, and the full steam ahead collision of Wet Firecracker, but I generally lost interest after that, not quite getting the same kind of sing-along, bang-the-beat-on-the-steering-wheel urge from the remaining tracks as those introductory ones.  This, I’d say, at least maintained the band more on my radar than other Matador listens which got approximately one disinterested spin before being retired.

We’ll say it was that fledgling interest – and a switch to a label I ended up having more success with: Touch and Go – that had me looking at Lifestyle when it came out, stumbling across it in the used bin of the glorious Slackers video game / cd shop (and which I miss dearly).  This time the timing and sound were right: I love Lifestyle; it quickly became one of my favorite records, and it encouraged me to keep going with Silkworm’s back- (and from that point on) forward-catalogue, and I’ve never looked balked since.

Well, sorta.

Because I still don’t listen to Firewater all that much.  And in the back of my head, I’ve felt like a shitty Silkworm fan, like I don’t “understand” their seminal release in some way.  I listened to In The West a shit ton, and Libertine is somewhat bland if you’re not paying attention, but I’d return to it over this disc.  Confoundingly, I do know and appreciate all of the tracks on Firewater, and not out of forced repetition.  They’re good songs, on the whole, excepting maybe Cannibal Cannibal only because it lacks any notable hook or beat.  I’d even rate some of the songs as Bests, including the opener, or the sprawling Tarnished Angel, or The Lure of Beauty.  So what is it?  Why can’t I get into the album?

Trying to be a bit more analytical about it, and to justify my three star rating, I think the reviews I read fell a little bit into the Matador pimping mentality I had.  Here was a band which had made a pretty loud and noisy splash for guitar rock fans, and then lost a member (willingly; Joel Phelps left over, I believe, the stresses of the life), and then took their time recording a new record as a trio for, at that point, the coolest label around.  It was a recording you wanted to succeed, and as long as they didn’t drastically change directions or phone it in, they could.  And they didn’t do either of those things.  So I think if you had been following them up to that point, the full-bluster sound of the album’s kickoff is such a ‘we’re here to stay’ sign versus the more slowburn style of other albums’ material that it can’t but Wow your ears, and then Albini’s up-front production style highlights every extended solo or heavy duty drum beat thereafter.

But if you remove yourself from the chronology, and assess the album on its own… I think it’s a bit of a mess.  The sequencing is almost ruinous, it goes on for too long, and the songwriting style and production style are inconsistent.   There’s no central theme or feeling.  This last point I feel is what drives home the “good songs, but…” nagging feeling that always prevents me from putting the disc on; since I’m an album guy, I know what emotions the other discs offer, but not so much on Firewater.  And at 16 tracks and almost an hour runtime, it’s not an easy disc to just toss on as a lark.  It’s all very indicative of the transition the group found themselves in; of having to feel out a three-man sound and determine an identity going forward.  Yes, they took their time to arrive at wholly original songs, but it was still a requisite step in getting to the subsequent Developer, which was a much more concise record.

The inconsistent songwriting and production method go hand in hand.  The crawl and strum of track four’s Slow Hands feels like a  remnant from the previous era; to counter the lack of extra guitar, Andy Cohen plays the shit out of his, and lets his solo extend into madness.  It’s impressive, but a pacing hiccup placed after the toe-tapping beat of its lead-ins, and his extra efforts are captured with stereotypical Albini rawness, making them louder than other parts of the album.  This volume fluctuation occurs elsewhere, and for those tracks that hit above or below the median, it ends up making them sound slightly out of place, almost like demos.  The sequencing comment is a result of just having too much material, and besides the dead-stop of ‘Hands,’ it just so happens that several of those demo-sounding tracks happen post what would’ve been a perfect close with Beauty, making the end of the disc drag.

Firewater is an album of excess, out of necessity.  Thematically, production, stylistically: All of it just out at odd edges, making for a hard-to-swallow whole.  That’s not to say its without value; there’s certainly enough material here to form an awesome album, and almost any given track has some noteworthy Silkworm element to it.  Again, though, it’s the construction of it as a whole where the matter gets confused, as the group finds its “modern” sound from the bits and pieces of its former life with member Joel Phelps.  Mileage will certainly vary, but for me, the unevenness (as endlessly described above…) makes it my last go-to SKWM disc.