Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!
Sea Priest
(Dot Dash/Remote Control)

Silly band name aside, there’s a fair bit to like about Adelaide six-piece Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!. They’re the newest signing to Remote Control’s consistently excellent in-house label Dot Dash, which has also brought us St Helens, Wolf & Cub, Snowman and much other goodness. This immediately makes them a promising bunch, and by and large Sea Priest is the first step toward fulfilling that promise.

This debut full-length album is quite a departure from the band’s previous work, which first brought them to attention via Triple J’s Unearthed initiative. In contrast to the abrasive, distortion-fuelled sounds of their early EPs, the songs here are slick and radio-friendly, particularly singles 'War Coward' and 'Animal Spirit Guide'. In particular, the addition of vocalist Caitlin Duff has lent the band a dimension that they lacked – older fans mightn't necessarily consider this a good thing, but there's no doubt that the "new" Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! are a more polished and palatable proposition.

This isn’t necessarily to say that the album’s lightweight, though – there’s enough of interest here to make Sea Priest worth sustained listening. The band definitely have a way with a melody, but they've retained enough of their former liking for heavier sounds, to lend muscle to what might be otherwise overly cutesy songs. Even so, they do sail a little close to the wind at times if you're not really into JJJ-friendly indie pop.

The fact that Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! now feature two markedly different vocalists also sets them apart from the indie crowd. Original vocalist David Williams is all ragged charm, while Duff (apparently enlisted after Williams lost his voice and decided that long-term lead vocalist duties weren’t for him) has a cooing quality that falls somewhere between Sarah Blasko and Patience Hodgson. It’s the songs where Williams and Duff both provide vocals that are most instantly appealing, particularly the dead catchy 'Little Cowboys, Bad Hombres', which features an intertwining bitter/sweet vocal combination recalls Black Francis and Kim Deal, even if Williams doesn't scream quite like Frank does. It'll surely be the next single and should be a lock-in for Triple J action.

There's still a suggestion that the band remain capable of more than perky pop anthems. 'All of Us in the Water' shows another side to the band’s sound – a quiet, minimalist lament with the two vocalists accompanied only by acoustic guitar. It’s the only real change of pace on the record, and a direction that the band will hopefully explore further in the future. In the meantime, this is an engaging debut and marks Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! as a band likely to follow peers like Sparkadia and I Heart Hiroshima out of the indie ghetto.

Tom Hawking