Customer Reviews

Faces in the Fire

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is was a great, early album by the Dots. However, buyers should be forewarned that it's also very short -- you'll be paying the price of a full-length album for only 24 minutes of music. That said, it's a great little release, a welcome darkly humorous offering after the conceptual gloom of "The Tower." The album also points towards the experimentalism and greater sonic pallette of later albums such as "Asylum." Many of the tracks are ingenious mock commercials for non-existent products, combining social criticism with black comedy. The lyrics of the first track, for example, an insanely up-beat techno-pop ditty, describe a violent attack upon a young man, who crawls into a house and bleeds his life out upon the floor. "Better get the BLASTO out to blast away the stains. Nothing's better!", the narrator cheerfully comments. Other themes explored on this album include sex with androids, pornographic videos, the apocalypse, and cat food.

Be forewarned! If you are looking for a place to start with LPD, do not choose this CD. It is the third album by this amazing band, but definitely not one of my favorites. It is a very early work and pretty rough going in places. The music is very difficult to describe, but Edward Ka'Spel's vocals, which are usually either so soothing, so melodic, or so emotional wracked they send chills up my spine, and too sarcastic, too self-mocking, to be truly effective on this album. Yet, Ed excels at sarcasm, but I don't think he uses this to its best effect on this album.

As far as the album goes, in my opinion, only the tracks "Love in a Plain Brown Envelope" and "Neon Gladiators" show sparks of the future supernova brilliance that would later enthrall me (and many others) with the wonder that are the Dots. If you want an excellent place to begin (which I'm guessing you are, if you're shopping for Dots' CDs here) then please give The Maria Dimension, 9 Lives to Wonder, Crushed Velvet Apocalypse, or Canta Mientras Puedas a try. You most certainly would not be disappointed. Faces in the Fire is only a recommended listen if you have ten or more of their albums.

There are some quintessentially LPD sounds herein . And this is where they moved from very interesting to exceptional . Psychedelic and progressive , with intelligence .

I love this CD. If it doesn't make you laugh, there's something wrong. It's only a 6 song mini-LP, but the songs flow together wonderfully and have a 'marketing/commercial' tie-in, as the TV on the cover illustrates. Maybe a little pricey for about half an hour of music, but the Dots make it worthwhile.

Tracks: 1. Blasto 2. Love In A Plain Brown Envelope 3. Sleezo 4. Neon Gladiators 5. Kitto 6. Eight Minutes To Live