The Fire Engines were barely a blip on the music radar, but for those in the right place at the right time, that small speck was like a bull's-eye. By 1980, Scotland's post-punk explosion was already in full bloom, having birthed Orange Juice and Josef K. Right in there with them were the Fire Engines, but unlike their erstwhile peers, the short-lived group existed to burn bright and fast and, inevitably, to burn out. It's music of the primitive "we-can-do-it-too" school, and as such some 25 years or so later it's easy to understand the impact it had on other aspiring bands.
Indeed, Hungry Beat, a collection of the groups formative releases, arrives with testimonials from Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie and Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos, whose band recently coaxed the Fire Engines into the studio and back onto the stage. While Primal Scream and Franz Ferdinand are quite different from one another, one can see the respective appeal of the Fire Engines' sound. In the case of the former and fellow fans the Jesus and Mary Chain, its ragged chaos certainly resonated. In the case of the latter, it was the high-strung naff funk undercurrent that probably connected first.
But even taken on its own terms, Hungry Beat is a shambling blast, as exciting as its members were clearly excitable. The disc collects the group's entire first and sole album (the perfectly named Lubricate Your Living Room), the A's and B's from the Fire Engines' three singles, and a handful of alternate takes. The last are perhaps a funny inclusion, considering how little the Fire Engines sound like the kind of band that bothered with such niceties as "takes." At any given second, each song sounds like it's either about to fall apart or explode, and you can practically hear the band smiling at the prospect.
"Candyskin" and "New Thing in Cartons" sound like the Fall having a happy day, the massed vocals and strings of the former a novel method of overcoming the song's lo-fi environment. "Meat Whiplash" goes absolutely nowhere and does a great job doing it. "Get Up and Use Me" (covered by Franz Ferdinand on the split they later shared with the Fire Engines) is all adenoidal no wave cowbell skronk, replete with unembarrassed false start (mysteriously, the song's alternate take runs longer, faster, and doesn't include the fuck-up).
It's "Big Gold Dream" that plays up the jittery dance elements that you can hear in half of indiedom (even if most of indiedom has never heard these guys before), but the apex of Hungry Beat is a seven-minute ditty called "Discord" that offers a relentless one-chord funk fix. The song fades out with a few drums fills and screams, but you can just as easily imagine another 10, 20, 30 minutes of music not captured on tape. At seven minutes it's long enough to lock into a groove, but one can only imagine the dance floor possibilities had the thing got longer.
James Murphy, for one, certainly did. Recall that the Fire Engines got a shout out in his hilarious 2002 breakthrough hip parade "Losing My Edge". Now that this music's back in print, fans can finally hear where at least some of that edge came from in the first place. And as we all know now from that song, Murphy's never been wrong.
