‘Tomorrow's Fire’ by Squirrel Flower
‘Tomorrow's Fire’ by Squirrel Flower
“I Don’t Use a Trash Can,” which opens the fourth Squirrel Flower LP, is actually a mature revisiting of a song that singer-songwriter Ella Williams put out on 2015’s Early Winter Songs from Middle America, her first Squirrel Flower EP.
The new version is less pretty than the original, and Williams sings it with less enunciative delicacy. However, that barely indicates the kind of negative ardor with which she and Tomorrow’s Fire delve into grunginess that might satisfy the modern-rock acolytes who believe that In Utero (getting a reissue this month on its 30th anniversary) was Nirvana’s finest as well as darkest album.
Nevertheless, Williams won’t give up the more tuneful and thoughtful sides of her indie-folk origins any more than Kurt Cobain could spurn his Pixies-infused melodicism, and she doesn’t simply add amplifiers and electricity as if they’re the only elements she needs to make effectively noisy rock ‘n’ roll.
She also needs the understanding of how to produce the music for the strongest, often bluntest impact; musicians, like Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan and the War on Drugs bassist Dave Hartley, who know how to support the best interests of each song; and words that can make themselves known inside the resulting controlled explosions.
Williams and her words remain lucid whether the drums boom like cannon shots in “Canyon” or the drums disappear and Williams has little but murky twang and a higher-pitched vocal echo as her comfortless company in “What Kind of Dream Is This?”
Nirvana isn’t the only older-school touchstone: “Intheskatepark” [sic] revs and grinds the way the Breeders didn’t do often enough, “Alley Light” recalls Springsteen’s working-class blues without copying them, and the final number, “Finally Rain,” hones Freakwater’s alt-country edge until it glimmers. The finale and the opener are bookend demonstrations that Squirrel Flower has incorporated past selves, not abandoned them.
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Stream or download mp3s of Tomorrow's Fire on Amazon here.
