City on Fire (active: 2009 – )
Song: “Close The Door”
(For the month of October, all Friday music posts will feature local bands that I love. I hope these essays make you love them, too.)
September 2010, Lower East Side: I arrived at the Delancey to listen to a new band I had recently met. However, unlike the standard rock motifs of the other acts scheduled to play that night, this group specialized in a sound born out of jazz -- the original American art form, godfather to the rock and rap monoliths that tower over the current music landscape. This brings me to the popular argument tossed about these days, the one regarding the ability of jazz to appeal to an audience raised on drum machines and Auto-Tune. To that debate, I offer a one-word rebuttal: listen. Comprised of Andrea Diaz (vocals, piano), Marc Anderson (violins, guitar, production), Stephen Anderson (drums, production), and John Alexander (bass), the band known as City on Fire brings a rock swagger to jazz’s sultriness, resulting in a sound so sublime it borders on the preordained. Even the band’s origin seems colored in the rosy-tinted patina of destiny. Had composer Marc Anderson failed to notice a certain gothic Mad Hatter (Diaz) at a crowded Halloween party last year, the perfect coupling of Ms. Diaz’s lyrics and Mr. Anderson’s instrumentals may have never occurred.
And be glad that it did. Consider the song “Close the Door”. It begins with piano keys ascending and descending like ocean waves. Soon, Ms. Diaz’s voice arrives, emerging from the sea foam like Botticelli’s Venus, clothed in the sounds of Anderson’s violin. Lyrics such as “Your eyes cut me like razorblades” bear qualities reminiscent of Surrealism, that iconic movement born out of the 1920’s, an age in which jazz was a core element of the zeitgeist. As the music builds in its quiet urgency, the drums arrive, completing a painting as haunting as Magritte’s men in bowler hats, as elegant as Dali’s melting timepieces. “Don’t leave me alone”, the voice begs, a plea both from the tormented narrator of the song and from the impatient spirits waiting for a new jazz age to manifest. If City on Fire is any indication, that age has arrived.
More about City On Fire:
Image: City on Fire’s MySpace page
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