Firewater’s Tod A. has always had a sound that sits outside of the mainstream. Rough around the edges and a little wobbly, he sounds like what you’d get if the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan had been raised by carnies instead of a whiskey bottle. He’s always been an interesting figure, and Firewater’s always been one of those bands that seemed on the verge of putting something really special together, but never quite pulling it off. The Golden Hour marks the first Firewater record in four years and it was worth the wait, and should excite any Firewater fans who might have been losing patience waiting for the band to bring it all together. Prior to this effort, a divorce and (according to him) the re-election of President George W. Bush sent A. on a self-imposed exile through Indonesia, India, Pakistan, and Turkey. The songs on The Golden Hour show the fruits of those travels, right down to the use of regional musicians and traditional instruments from the countries A. visited. This isn’t a world music disc, though. The Golden Hour still has that bigtop/barstool/goodfellas Firewater vibe, and A.’s personal and political bitterness probably make for some of his best lyrics so far. “I took a long last glance / Around this glorified garbage can / And then I burned all of my bridges goodbye,” he sings on “Already Gone” and he doesn’t sound interested in coming back. By album’s end, though, he’s touched down back home to observe, “everything’s the same / Or maybe just a little bit worse.”  Sombre stuff, but on an album where lively cannibal drums provide the bulk of the percussion, things never descend into self-pity. This might just be Firewater’s best record yet, and this comes from someone who considers 1998’s The Ponzi Scheme to be one of the most underrated albums of the 90s.
—Andrew Gilstrap

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