ALBUM: Fire Town In the Heart of the Heart Country (1986)
MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$
For some reason, I have great clarity on how or at least why I bought this.
Critic Steve Simels, then of Stereo Review magazine, said it was one of the best records he had heard. Ordinarily I’d take that with a grain of salt. But Simels was the guy who said Tonio K.’s ‘Life in the Food Chain’ was the best album he had ever heard.
So I bought that Tonio album sight unseen (or unheard. Remember no samples online in those days, about 1978). And Simels was right, more or less.
Foodchain is a helluva an album. And to this day, I consider Tonio K. to be one of the underappreciated artists of all time.
This Fire Town album? Not so much. Now this is a very good album, very catchy songs that make you want to hum. But they aren’t plowing new ground here or showing us anything we haven’t heard. Very midwestern sounding, country rock or pre-Americana. BoDeans would be a touchstone. They are like the anti-Wilco, with bright cheery tunes and optimistic outlooks. Like John Denver with more electric rock guitar.
The singer’s voice is too generic for me, not bad, but doesn’t quite have that quality of making the listener believe he’s meaning what he’s saying. The songs are actually excellent and one can see where Simels might of thought he was seeing the NBT, a new Eagles or a new Crosy, Stills & Nash. But not quite. However this, like Tonio K., is an underappreciated gem.