The Theater Fire - Everybody Has A Darkside

The themes of love and loss and slew of characters who litter the songs on Everybody Has a Dark Side are nothing new; the venerable raconteurs Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and the rest of the gamut of America's greatest songwriters have delivered these in an almost cloying fashion over the past half-century. The Theater Fire, however, take a new approach to the familiar, entwining the haunts of life and the dusty road into a rambling sophomore album that pulls from the seemingly disparate roots of that mish-mash we call Americana--rock, country, folk, gospel, zydeco. The Fort Worth, TX band finds itself in the same company as Calexico, Lambchop, Smog, and to a stretch, Crooked Fingers. The dual leadership of Don Feagin and Curtis Heath aids the septet's skillful mélange of dark thematics and humorous anecdotes through the solemn, twangy "Kicking Up the Darkness" and the mariachi-centric "Fiddleback Weaver." "Valentwine" is a country ode to a fuck-up's relationship woes, and "Dark Side" doesn't miss its chance to play on the Star Wars connotation, "Even Darth Vader was a child/and his anger made him wild/the light was lost inside him." "Land of Nod" pulls its verses from the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson's poem of the same name, backing it with carefree guitar plucking and brass. Texas through and through, Everybody Has a Dark Side traverses lots of worn paths, but does so all on its own horse. Download "Kicking Up The Darkness" [here] [www.thetheaterfire.com]