The Fire Engines? You know, Franz Ferdinand’s all-time favourite band from yesteryear? Lord knows Alex Kapranos and co have made a song and dance about them. Perhaps not so much of the dance, but they did create a cover version: after enticing them to reform after 14 years for their Barrowlands gig in December 2004, they covered ‘Get Up And Use Me’ while The Fire Engines, fronted by David Henderson, most recently Nectarine No 9, reciprocated with ‘Jacqueline’.
So Domino, ever the bastions of unearthing hidden gems, decide it’s high time for The Fire Engines to enter today’s music scene. Good plan, had the band not been characteristically and hilariously anti-commercial.
Codex Teenage Premonition represents a collection of shoddy studio outtakes and live tracks from their 18 months together. For faithful fans, it must be heavenly to see stirrings from the Fire Engines camp again. But for the new generation? If there were a hope in hell of today’s Franz fans understanding their influences, this will have put an end to it, with the Engines coming across more like Franz’s barmy uncle than their wise mentors.
‘Everything’s Roses’, typical of the album, is a sugar-pop find, but one that’s cloaked by terrible sound, purposefully haphazard playing, broken shards of glass, barbed wire, overgrown nettle and a state of the art alarm system. Clearly, they’re punk all the way and ensure it’s near-impenetrable. Yet once the barrier’s broken, the reward doesn’t equal the effort.
One to put back where we found them.