Tod A, ex-conductor of downtown Manhattan industrial rock deities, Cop Shoot Cop, as well as the international conglomerate, Firewater, is back from a two-year long sojourn that took him from the Middle East through Central and South East Asia, around and through India and back to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to record the basic tracks of Firewater’s new release, The Golden Hour (Bloodshot Records, 2008).
Where Cop were a stunning live band, filling the stage with metal noise making contraptions that required girding and piping that looked as though OSHA would mandate a “Hardhat Required Beyond This Point” warning sign, Firewater is more conducive to effective record making. They have been orchestral and anthemic, with smartly-dressed women bowing stringed instruments behind Tod A’s blasphemous and incisive exegeses of dogma and group-think.
In recent interviews around the release of The Golden Hour, Ashley (I believe that to be his family birth name) said that in 2005, after a tough divorce and the darkening pall of Bushdom looming, he felt compelled to get out of town and country for a while in order to heal and wait out the impending calamities from afar.
After a series of adventures–detention by Pakistani authorities, a last-minute aversion of a trip through kidnapper-studded Afghan terrain,being drugged by an Indian family whose hospitality he had mistaken as earnest–he wrapped up that leg of his travels, pulled the boys from Firewater together in guitarist Uri Kinrots’s hometown of Tel Aviv and started laying down sides. He was able to later work his vocals, as well as some field recordings he had collected throughout travels, into the mix.
I wondered where he’d been the last few years, and now we all know.
Some Firewater Tour Dates:
May 23 Boston - Paradise
May 24 Brooklyn - Southpaw
May 25 Philadelphia - North Star
May 28 Cleveland - Beachland Ballroom
May 29 Detroit - Magic Stick
May 30 Chicago - Empty Bottle
May 31 Minneapolis - Triple Rock
June 3 Seattle - Chop Suey
June 4 Portland - Doug Fir
photo via aversion.com
