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While it’s trendy for bands to emerge from their first few months together clutching a record contract, the road for We Start Fires has been more of a slog. Having formed in 2002, only now are the quartet starting to receive real attention. Yet, while some bands hastily appear onto the scene, We Start Fires are the very antithesis of that sort of slapdash thinking. There’s an effort to apparently lob as much incessant energy into their songs as possible before collapsing in a spent heap, yet at the same time they have carefully constructed songs that are undeniably pop.
Despite being the night’s headliners, the Darlington four piece were rather surreally placed in the middle of the bill, for reasons which remain a mystery. That didn’t seem to affect their commitment or enthusiasm the band, despite a fairly sparse crowd (most of Glasgow’s residents perhaps drowning their sorrows after Scotland’s footballers thumped the self destruct button yet again earlier in the evening). There was plenty of bouncing around from the band straight from the start, synths player Melissa Marx hurling herself from side to side like she was trying to shake off a particularly persistent parasite stuck to her back. Vocalist/guitarist Becky Stefani adds both swagger and allure, as the group detonate the heady cocktail of driving, peppy pop and snappy rock that is ‘Play’ and the cock rock aping ‘Hot Metal’.
When We Start Fires get things right, they do so spectacularly. The likes of the insanely dancy ’Magazine’ have both charm and tunefulness in abundance, with Ashley Wade’s drumming providing a steady and dependable beat to counter the sometimes scattershot approach from the rest of the band. Between song chat is kept fairly brief (a quick lament on the home nations on pitch fiascos aside) and the band simply crack on with tune after tune, all fizzy paradigms of the Donnas and Blondie having a drunken liaison.
And therein lies the problem that bedevils We Start Fires. Their debut album heavy set is good for the most part, great occasionally and rarely mediocre. However, at the same time there isn’t that much invention from the band and so what you get is various variants of the same song being trundled out. For the most part that’s acceptable and they’re a solid band, yet Gigwise can’t help but feel a tad disappointed when they depart 35 minutes later. They possess a decent formula but one that wears a bit thin, and leaves We Start Fires as a band still searching for the lighter to set off full blown arson on their behalf, rather than the bonfire that currently exists.
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