If you ever wanted to watch a concert hall burn down in slow, slow motion, then Galaxie 500's On Fire is the album for you. This sluggish burning would take place on a cold snowy day in December (or perhaps January) - you'd be watching from across the street, a warm cup of hot chocolate in your hand. With endless caverns of reverb and acidic wah-wah, On Fire has the band filling the concert hall with sweet and slothful melodies (such as "Tell Me" and "Snowstorm"), hosing it down with gasoline ("When Will You Come Home" and "Decomposing Trees") and finally burning that sucker down ("Another Day" and "Leaving the Planet").
Dean Wareham's guitar solos have a kind of reserved snarl to them, always following his lyrical swatch of life lessons and surrealistic portraiture. On "Tell Me", Wareham falsetto's his way in and then brings it heavy: "Tell me one more time/you like the shoes I wear/tell me as you leave/you really couldn't care." He hints at some kind of painful loss - but as to what, the singer purposefully leaves things ambiguous. Then on "Decomposing Trees" Wareham confesses, "my toes can talk/and they're smiling at me/'come down' they say/not afraid anymore," as bell percussion rattles and the album's only saxophone part defiantly announces it's presence. Even at his most cryptic (and playful), there is something captivating about Wareham's songwriting.
Of course, for me, the real hall-razer of On Fire is "Another Day". I feel this song in particular encapsulates all the best qualities of Galaxie 500: Damon Krukowski's powerful, tumbling drums, Naomi Yang's soothing, subdued chant and Wareham's liquid guitar. Together they irreverently sing, "It's just another way, that everyday is not the same day," watching the grand old concert hall slow-burn to the ground around them.
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