Songs We Should Have Written
For their fifth album, Brooklyn's Firewater has brought forth a set of covers. Led by bass player and vocalist Tod A, he provides accompanying commentary on why he was drawn to each of the eleven tunes. Except for one, all of the songs are united, in their original form, by a potent emotional voice. This allows Tod's ragged baritone plenty of room to punch and kick against the solid rough-hewn rhythmic underpinnings. The aforementioned exception isSonny Bono's "The Beat Goes On," which, as written, eschewed depth of character for slight but bright lyrical subservience. Appropriately, Tod was attracted to this number because of its bass line, one of the first he ever learned. Album highpoints include a venomous take on theBeatles"Hey Bulldog" which amp things up at the midpoint, and a dreamy version ofRobyn Hitchcock's "I Often Dream of Trains" which brings the disc to a quiet close. --David Greenberger