
A label’s identity is partly established through the company it keeps. The records below expand on the matter.
Bardo Pond, Under the Pines (2017) Philly’s bastion of heavy psych has been part of the Fire roster for only a portion of their existence, but based on this record, the band’s third long-player for the label (fourth if Acid Guru Pond, their 2016 studio summit with Germany’s Guru Guru and Japan’s Acid Mothers Temple is counted), the association has been a fruitful one. As the six tracks unwind it becomes apparent they haven’t lost a thing, and have further been disinclined to alter the program, so newbies with a love for prime Bay Area sweetness and post-Detroit amplifier gristle can step right up to this one.
The heavier psych gets, the more difficult it can be to effectively expand, but Bardo Pond doesn’t have that problem, mainly because they don’t really thud, but rather burn and move methodically forth, their power building incrementally in settings of subtle complexity and a preferred slow pace (the name of a collab with ace Kiwi guitarist Roy Montgomery was Hash Jar Tempo). Isobel Sollenberger’s vocals continue to add distinctiveness, shining on Under the Pines’ title track, and her flute, which is given the spotlight during instrumental closer “Effigy,” provides an unstrained link to the ’60s root.

Guided by Voices, Let’s Go Eat the Factory (2011) No one label can harness the seemingly incessant flow of creativity that springs from Dayton, OH’s songbird and rocker Robert Pollard, but since 2011 Fire’s done a solid job of corralling the return of his highest-profile band. This was not only the comeback of Guided by Voices, but the reunion of the “classic lineup” (that’d be Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell on guitars, Greg Demos on bass, Kevin Fennell on drums, and Pollard at the mic, natch) making it something considerably more than a recommencement from whence GBV’s 2004 farewell victory tour left off.
Let’s Go Eat the Factory didn’t disappoint. Like the records that solidified GBV’s reputation in the mid ‘90s, it’s stuffed with songs, many of them short but satisfying in the manner unique to Pollard, as the album added to the guy’s near-gobsmacking level of songwriting prolificacy. Yes, that means not every tune is a gem, and some of it (like a pair of Sprout’s tunes) borders on bizarre, but as on the most noteworthy of later-period Pollard related product, the pieces all fit, and the whole isn’t something a fan would want to miss.
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