Longwave

The press release for There’s a Fire begins by discussing where Longwave intended to record the album (in New York), then goes on to discuss the mountain-top studio where they actually recorded the album, before getting into the band’s peregrinations to the top of the mountain and the aesthetic virtues of the top of the mountain. This goes on for nearly two pages. There are reasons for this. When the laser hits the groove, you experience an album, stripped of all vestigial glamour, with few of the heights (mountain-like) hinted at in the release. There’s an air of grandiosity to the album, with its impossible falsettos, lengthy instrumental breaks and mawkish lyrics that producer John Leckie has managed to make sound coherent, yet far too cold and roomy. A disappointing follow-up to the pop promise Longwave hinted at on 2002’s The Strangest Things.