Song Of The Day 7/30/2012: Firewater - "Bourbon And Division"

In 1996 we got this album at the Oasis Listening Station Program (home of the bottomless Allen wrench) from Jetset Records by a band called Firewater. The album cover grabbed me right away, as did the title: Get Off The Cross...We Need The Wood For The Fire. It was the new project of Tod A., late of Cop Shoot Cop, a band I'd heard numerous things about but don't remember hearing. It didn't matter because I got behind Firewater's agenda immediately: an even darker side of Tom Waits' Rain Dogs jacked on vodka and spite.*   

GOTC...WNTWFTF injected a dose of multiculturalism into an indie rock scene that was just beginning to sound the same.** Firewater made klezmer, eastern European styles, tango and Latino rock proper channels for anger and disgust.*** Tod A. has the snidest snarl of any rock singer I can recall. I don't doubt one thing he's saying. "Bourbon And Division" is a song I usually dredge up when I'm going through a rough time and just want to scowl at everything, or after I've gotten over the rough time and I want to recall how great it felt to get intoxicated.**** You can decide for yourself if now is one of those times.

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* Coincidentally, I'm supposing, Waits' 1999 song "Come On Up To The House" contains the line "Come down off the cross, we can use the wood."

** It got better.

*** Firewater later found solace -- sort of -- in Tod's travels in the more conciliatory, but still pissed-off, album The Golden Hour.

**** Although I also want to call out another song from this album called "When I Burn This Place Down," which contains the brilliant, laugh-out-loud line "When they break both your legs, don't come running to me":