New York based Jonathan Fire*eater seemingly had everything in 1996.Credibility,critical acclaim(with their mini lp ‘Tremble under boom lights’) and a newly signed major deal with Dreamworks.Popular opinion is that by ’97 they had severely blown it,through drugs,naivety and a resulting lukewarm first album.
‘Wolf songs for lambs’ is though a supreme piece of garage/psych(well before the strokes,jet et al hijacked the term) with some of the most inventive rhythms guitar music had heard in a long time.A strange amalgam of Can and Bo Diddley beats.Their sound was built around creepy hammond organ and Stewart Lupton’s jaggeresque snarl.Lyrically lupton was an absolute cut above.Songs such as ‘The shape of things that never came’ and ‘Everybody plays the mime’ showed clever yet never too smart arse wordplay.The whole album’s production is centered around reverb(tons of it) and brings out an otherness,that perfectly showcases the music​.In short,they’d not only fulfilled their early potential but surpassed themselves.
Inexplicably(or maybe not) journalists seemed all too eagre to put the boot in to this ‘hype’ band.Even if they’d played a big hand in the process themselves.Their fate was sealed and they split after an aborted attempt at a follow up.This debut album easily ranks as one of the best unsung or otherwise of the nineties.