MOG

The downer vocals, the whispers of regret, it’s all hitting me as I listen to the opening strains of "Dream State Flying", one of the tracks on Firecracker People, by Hotel Lights, a project helmed by Ex Ben Folds Five Darren Jesse. In this song I can see clear through the Summer to the Winter, with me standing outside that old brick building I used to work in. Decked out in a sweater and blue jeans, I watch the wind push the sinewy branches on the trees.

Even from the first time I listened to Firecracker People it only took a few lovely drops of piano for me to start warming up to it. The touchstones are all there: a comforting falsetto voice, tasteful production, and a solid acoustic guitar strum that occasionally builds to electric. It brings to mind an image of a warm candle shining light in the darkness of an old barn. And like an old barn, the foundation is rock solid, with everything else worn down and on the verge of falling apart.
 
On Firecracker People I hear the built in wintry scenery the songs contain: the roads that go on for miles, the dried cracks in the muddy ground, the endless snowdrifts. That’s not to say it’s a depressing record, but there’s more than a shred of melancholy to be found here, and if we can grab a hold of that melancholy we’ll be amazed at the places they take us, to those dark things we don’t dare think about.

It can take you back to that thing you did last Summer that you never told anybody about, to that affair you thought you covered up, to that person you were selfish with, to that relationship you willingly destroyed.

There’s a sense of recovery in this record, a sense of beginning again after a great moment of tumult, a regrouping. How a song can fit that mood so well, with just a flicker of rain, the vocals coming in and out of the mix, and instrumentation that bottoms out into a tide pool. The guitar sounds fill in the plucky holes just enough to support the melody before the whole song drops away.

In these post-millennial, post everything days, its nice to rely on this sturdy-as-an-old-house record, so close and personal, its like flipping through an old photo album. In one of the pictures I am holding up to the camera a homemade bow and arrow made out of construction paper. I made it in the middle of a two-week blanketing Minnesota blizzard. Another picture is taken from the diving board of an opulent Miami pool and is faded at its edges like so many childhood memories are.

The progression from Summer to Fall and Winter is in this record in spades. It’s in the hushed vocals that bring to mind hardwood floors of New England, a lace that radiates around Fall, that old heartbreak in the air, the northerly winds that carry disappointments and regrets, rolling delicately towards the granddaddy of depression time, Christmas.

With a simple guitar-bass-drum contingent and great understated vocals, Hotel Lights are about as cloying as an unassuming bed and breakfast. They might not dazzle immediately, but come winter you’ll crave its down-home comforts.

The pace quickens on "Norina", an up-tempo number that threatens to rock and finally fulfills its promise at the end of the song. "Why should you count the days on your hand?" He asks over delicate strumming, inviting us back to his place and pouring us a whiskey, neat.

"Blue Always Finds Me" is an assurance that no matter where I go in this life, the blue fog of Winter will follow me, and each Winter I'll come back here, to relive it all over again.

 "Firecracker People" is a sweeping, lilting ballad an exploration of some of the more destructive elements in our lives. We see that these Firecracker People are eternally "going off all the time" and through this song, we see a whole world constructed with bits of string, songs with characters cut out and propped up, a living diorama with tempers flaring up and blowing out, all framed by a memory of that familiar piano, the ghosts of Ben Folds Five creaking into the sound. It sums up the record nicely, a companion to get you through the coldest, bleakest months of the year.