A wee piece written for the liner notes of the forthcoming new album by Flaming Fire:
FLAMING FIRE
Flannery O'Connor reinterpreted for Greek theater, pagan Americana by way of the bar room singers from THE WICKER MAN, unconventional spirituality channeled through pop music… these peculiar juxtapositions of genre and intent go a long way toward explaining how impossible it is to easily explain the phenomenon that is Flaming Fire, a musical collective from New York who combine elements of baroque music, Greek theater, performance art, and a traveling tent revival to create one of the most unique groups currently passing as pop music. Led by eccentric musical polymath / preacher man Patrick Hambrecht and a revolving cast of participants (too many to even begin to keep track of, although his wife Kate and Lauren Weinstein remain regular players), their sound owes much to the seventies new wave / post-punk era, inviting comparisons to off-kilter bands like Devo, Gang of Four, Romeo Void, and the Residents, just to name a few. What separates them from the rest of the pack is their lyrical focus on spiritual concerns, couched in a peculiar form of pagan Christianity steeped in the kind of archetypes and apocalyptic signposts common to Flannery O'Connor's vision of the South. Like O'Connor, their visions of the Holy Spirit are not without a certain level of black humor and irony -- reflected most intensely in the brilliant "Kill The Right People" and the equally creepy "Goddess of War" -- and while their approach is oblique and unsettling enough to make one initially wonder just how serious they are about anything (much less religion), they are certainly no strangers to the concept that a great and unknowable mystery is at the center of all religion.
While the band's religious underpinnings are unquestionably a focal point of their sound and vision, unlike a lot of God-centric bands, they have never allowed it to overshadow the music; they've never denied their spiritual roots, but they've never made a big deal of it, either. It just it is, present for you to take it or leave it. Their pagan take on Christianity -- strange as it may be for a leader who grew up in the Southern Baptist church -- makes it considerably more accessible for those creeped out by the more conventional (and judgmental) brand of evangelical Christianity common to most Christian bands. It also helps immensely that their lyrics are unencumbered by the tedious and predictable dogma of most Christian bands, and that the band's revolving roster includes members who don't even share Hambrecht's religious views. Their surreal pageantry, best compared to a psychedelic form of Greek theater, lends yet another layer of spectacle to their epic performance art.
Of course, the band's memorable songs, built around catchy beats and melodies and anchored by beatific singing, make it entirely possible to appreciate the band without even agreeing with (or paying attention to) their lyrics. Certainly the jaw-dropping spectacle of their whacked-out live shows provides plenty of entertainment even for those totally uninterested in their spiritual side, and this is the diabolical genius of the band's existence: the way they have couched their message and their belief in such a deceptively festive and theoretically ironic manner means that they are able to appeal even to those ideologically opposed to their entire existence. It doesn't hurt that they have been consistently listenable for over more than a decade as a band, with a thematically consistent vision that has not wavered despite a revolving door of players. One can only hope that the band will be plying their subversive form of theological performance art for another decade to come.
