4 out of 5

Produced by: Brad Wood

Label: Rykodisc

Soaring, anthemic, and at points the most passionate thing you’ve heard – at least since the first time you heard Sunny Day – The Fire Theft’s debut (and sole full album to date) is also the exact reinvention it seemed like Enigk needed.  Every SDRE release has its fans, the same being true for Enigk’s solo work, but nothing has felt quite as pure and real as that group’s first release, Diary, perhaps because its a fresh start: No shadows of breakups or Christianity looking over the recording session.  Or maybe it’s the straight-up embrasure of prog-pop.  Regardless, it’s a wonderful thing to hear a group back fully in the saddle, producer Brad Wood returning as well with a good dollop of big-name releases between now and then to match FT’s big sound; opener Uncle Mountain ropes us in with keys and Jeremy’s recognizable scratchy croon, building and climbing until it breaks into that unbelievable peak that caught our attentions way back when.  Its a perfect first track to get us in the mood.

…And a perfect second track to indicate some of what holds the album back.  Regardless of whether the following minute or so is listed as ‘Waste Time Segue’ on your track list (some versions didn’t list it), that it wanders along – as per its title – after such a heart-pounding song humbles the momentum.  Some tracks are linked inbetween by fade-in and out passages, which helps maintain something of an outward-looking vibe which also comes across in the lyrics.  But as with this first example, the technique just as often feels like filler, giving our enthusiasm a chance to cool and recognize some of the repetitive elements and conceptual simplicities hiding behind wonderfully rich production and memorable booming and powerful bass and drums; some of these tracks don’t say much, to the point of cheesiness.  Producing a fantastic sounding pop song ain’t to scoff at, of course, but the point is more that their inclusion is unnecessary on an album with such yearningly emotional tracks as Houses and rip-snorting instrumental Rubberband, and thus comparatively seem like filler just to get us to the holy 60 minute runtime mark.

Setting those moments aside, if Diary spoke to every conflicted thought we had as young adults, Fire Theft passes through the crucible of experience – nabbing some, like, Genesis beats along the way – and repurposes that same intense questioning on the What’s and Whys of maturity.  It’s easy to read the album’s search for meaning as a study of Enigk and his evolving relationship with his band and music, but again, this is a fresh start; for every emotional breakup the songs detail (both through lyric and the ebb and flow of the compositions, for which Enigk’s bandmates must be equally credited ), there’s a followup feeling of recovery, and hope, culminating in the ‘I am everything’ declarations of closer Sinatra.  This standing-up and dusting-yerself-off approach is, ideally, one to which we all aspire at times, which makes the album’s depth in its consideration rewarding.

While at this point we’re a decade plus on and maybe closer to another reinvention than a followup album, Enigk and crew are quite accomplished to have delivered two distinctly notable masterworks in their careers.  It is true to say that if you like SDRE you’ll probably like Fire Theft, but interestingly, maybe going the way other isn’t as guaranteed.  FT are wholly more mature and stable than their former version, and in that sense, it makes the album’s effects that much more lasting.