Old Flame: Keeping The Fire Burning (VIDEO)
by Jody Jenkins
Somewhere deep into a thirteen-hour drive up from a Southern sojourn this summer, I remembered the CD Emma Ayres gave me after Old Flame’s studio shoot for Live At The Grid. I was lost in a tangle of highways between the old elevated I-95 that skirts Philly and the Jersey Turnpike when I scrounged it out of the glove box and fed it into the dash player like a communion wafer.
I was snaking through traffic stretching for miles ahead when the slow-build screeching feedback of “Ain’t A King” exploded through the speakers into a low-altitude guitar bombing run. The wailing broadcast radio vocals. Crisp high hat and fat bass backing. The sound was as powerful as it was simple and had an air of inevitability, as if it had always existed out there somewhere.
Reminiscent of the Black Angels, it harkened back to Hendrix, Page and Clapton, toeing vintage psychedelic rock with a completely fresh take. Windows down, weaving my Subaru battlewagon through the thick herd of weekend warriors, I became completely lost in the sound.
from Ain’t A King
“Whoever built this country built it far too wide
Now we can’t say what side we’re on tonight
Black market salesmen talks us to the ground
Listen to me honey cause there ain’t no way out
Listen to me honey cause there ain’t no way out now …”
Sometimes you’re not sure if you heard what you think you just heard and so I played the album through several times while Jersey farms and small towns rolled past on the way to the Meadowlands and the New York skyline. I kept playing songs over and over and then skipping back a few to catch something I’d missed while distracted.
Literally born of an urge to speak out at a moment when most of us were speechless, Old Flame wears their politics on their sleeve. Their bandcamp page describes them unabashedly as a dissident indie rock and blues “machine that kills fascists.” To stake that kind of claim says something about their boldness as a band, but to keep the dream alive you have to capture people’s musical imaginations with more than just slogans. And on that score there’s certainly something going on.
Musically and lyrically they’re authentic while mining veins of amped up electric dissent. When guitarist Sam Perry started riffing before taping Live At The Grid, he was unwinding some serious Henrdrix and drummer Ken Birchall and Nate Zachary noodled around trying to catch up and then dropped in behind him. It showed an appreciation for a time and a type of music that grew out of a culture of resistance. Then Perry cut a few riffs of his own that made you think on a deeper level about what they were about to unleash.
While the politics of protest can wear thin as a musical trope, Old Flame pulls it off, particularly in the two best songs on their EP Wolf In The Heather — “Aint A King” and “Smoke Show.” Both sound organic and come across as more than mere vehicles for political messaging. And they’re at opposite ends of a spectrum that shows the band knows how to shift gears. While “Ain’t A King” is a hell yeah anthem, “Smoke Show” has a Pied Piper element: It deftly speeds along on a stream of Perry’s light acoustics and the soft-touch, quick-paced snare and cymbals and then heads straight into a Belinda Carlislesque crescendo. From the first note, it sounds like a soft rock hit, warning us to beware of the political rainmaker in our midst. It’s meant as a compliment to say that the message is so subtle it could almost be mistaken for a song of lost love.
from Smoke Show
“Slow and steady
Moving towards me
Hands are shaking
I’ll do better next timeHere before me
Smoke show talking
Won’t be waiting
For you to come round’Smoke show
Smoke show
Don’t hold on
To something, something
Born to be gone …”
They’re still feeling their way into what they’re becoming so they touch a lot of bases on this record. “Queen Trigger,” the story of longing for someone who is always just out of reach, swims through a Hawaiian bluesy dreamscape. Emma Ayres’s pained, pleading vocals are reminiscent of KD Lang and Patsy Cline spun together in a more oaky texture. Both live and recorded, her sound and presence spans peaches and cream to wailing screams to a breathy sensuality that comes through perhaps clearest in the the aural dance between her and Perry’s talking guitar in songs like “Land Of Milk And Honey.” These guys aren’t a one trick pony, which has gotten them noticed locally and landed in them in shows at the Iron Horse and elsewhere.
It takes a bit of brass to think you can pull off some of the things Old Flame shoots for, but the more you listen, the more there is to like. It’s sassy and bold and when Emma Ayres screams … Feed the revolution so it grows up tall … you get the sense that what goes around, might just be coming back around again.
Jody Jenkins is a writer and filmmaker living in Northampton. He is Director of Field Production for Amherst Media and Editor of The Collective.
