Light For Fire :: "The Huckster"

J. Nicholas Allard, the narrative voice behind Light For Fire, put his misery to paper. He made that paper into sheet music and that sheet music into a debut record about a girl who ripped his guts out over the course of a summer in New York City. How forthright. In essence, here, look what you did and I don't care who knows about it. On second promotional mp3, "The Huckster", also track one on the album, Allard is stripped down, open with his problematic drinking and the most charming brand of fatalism you've heard since the last time you stupidly decided to walk home in a snow storm. The rest of the record, including the previously mentioned "NY (By The Hand)" reminds the listener of Spoon, but here, Allard seems completely unconcerned with any aesthetic sensibility or genre comparisons, powered only with his voice, an acoustic guitar and an unfolding heartbreak of which this is only side one, track one. So it begins, in medias res, where we know the outcome already, the terrible conclusion that lead to this moment. And none of this, the glaring honesty, the hooky little acoustic tune at the beginning of a nice pop record, takes away from this story and how something so obviously terrible could end up sounding so damn good.

Listen :: Light For Fire - "The Huckster"