Much of the indie rock coming out of the Pacific Northwest in the mid 1990s had a particular, cross-eyed stare: one eye looking to the cosmos, the other to the dirt. Something about the music felt both gigantic and life-sized, characterized by a seamless mingling of the mythic and the quotidian. This was how Isaac Brock could stare at the queue at a dying shopping mall's Orange Julius and see a metaphor for an existential purgatory, or how Doug Martsch, in his friendly, slacker lilt, could have late night bro-to-bro conversations with the Big Dipper. The New York band Forest Fire don't sound much like early Modest Mouse or Built to Spill, but one of the exciting things about their debut, the sleeper hit Survival, was that it recalled the spirit of indie rock's feet-on-the-ground, eyes-to-the-sky stance. There was a lackadaisical quality to its casually strummed guitars and to Mark Thresher's easygoing drawl, but embedded within what a cursory listen might mistakenly dismiss as sonic shrugs was something that felt decidedly and almost deceptively epic. It was one of those records that would always trick you into forgetting it was only 29 minutes long.
It was also easy to forget that Forest Fire were from Brooklyn. Not just because of the sweeping sprawl of their sound, but because they seemed to exist, in 2008 anyway, somewhere just outside of the churn of the hype machine. Released as a free download through the tiny but formidable blog-based imprint Catbird Records, Survival built an audience mainly through blogs and ended up appearing on (and even, in a few instances, topping) some notable year-end lists. A vote for Survival was a vote against buzz, as it seemed to gesture toward a whole, wide internet dense with undiscovered gems. Three years later, the digital landscape into which Forest Fire release their second LP feels more cluttered and complicated for sure, but they've still got a rogue streak to their image. One of their press bios claims that Forest Fire "reject the 'what's next' attitude plaguing so many of the NYC/Brooklyn scene," which-- as far as Amazon.com editorial lines go-- sound like fighting words. Fortunately, Staring at the X doesn't need them; it's good enough-- and weird enough-- to assert these kinds of claims on its own.
Signs of the band's development are scattered all over the record's first two minutes. Gone are Survival's campfire strums, and in their place some fuzzed-out, Martsch-sized riffage that unfurls across "Born Into"'s expansive sprawl. And in true Forest Fire fashion, there's plenty more sprawl where that came from. Clocking in at six-and-a-half minutes, the record's most extreme departure is also one of its standout moments: the sinister, hypnotic, bass-driven space-groove "They Pray Execution Style" (featuring perfectly deadpan lead vocals by multi-instrumentalist Natalie Stormann). Forest Fire swing between long stretches of darkness and sudden sunbursts ("The News"), and occasionally these two impulses compete within a single song. The ostensibly sprightly "Future Shadows" is a meditation on love and death, concluding with Thresher's steady-voiced admission, "I am afraid/ And I'm on my way."
Staring at the X ambles and meanders-- occasionally too much for its own good. Its second half in particular stays at a pretty uniform and sluggish tempo, which will make you long for such pop interruptions as the infectious single "The News" provided on Side A. As on Survival, Forest Fire are at their best when they're teasing out the formal contrasts in their sound, pivoting expertly between spacey slowburners and compact pop gems. But even more so than their promising debut, Staring at the X proves them to be a commendably ambitious band with the chops to carry out even their most far-flung ideas.
