Written over a number of years, the debut album from Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! bears all the hallmarks of a group traversing through self-discovery. Forming in 2006 with a sound that fell somewhere between Q & Not U and Death From Above 1979, their early EPs were brimming with ragged aggression and adolescent bravado. But when vocalist and guitar David Williams started losing his voice from too much screaming (as you do), petite singer Caitlin Duff, who was playing with Williams as part of a folk duo, was drafted in as the group’s frontwoman. She was the catalyst that set their evolution in motion.

Sea Priest, the band’s full-length debut, is still haunted by the ghosts of their early releases, You Seize the City, I'll Seize the Sky and 2007’s follow-up Boy, Hush Yr Mouth, Grrl Bare Yr Teeth. The augmented, serrated guitar chords and disco-punk beats point to their dalliance with a sound the band described as “monolithic tech-pop”, but what was actually closer to post-hardcore than anything else. It’s no surprise that with Duff on board, Williams and second guitarist Nathanial Morse have dialled back the distortion so they don’t drown out her naturally restrained voice.

In the quest to find where they all sit within the music, Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! have come up with some interesting results. ‘War Coward’ is perhaps the oldest of the 12 songs on Sea Priest. Stoic rhythms are juxtaposed with guitars that sound like sirens, noodling away like Omar Rodriguez would in At The Drive-In. It’s the bridge that connects old Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! with the new. While an avalanche of musical ideas saturate songs like ‘War Coward’ and opening salvo ‘Ghostress’, they do showcase a band with a keen eye for detail, deftly weaving threads of melody in and around each other. Elsewhere, ‘Little Cowboys, Bad Hombres’ and ‘Witch House’ are less dense and more formal in their structures. Maybe because they’re some of the catchiest on Sea Priest, but Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! feels most at home inhabiting this part of the musical map.

The only gripe I have with the whole thing is Duff and Williams’ vocals. Not only are too low in the mix, but they’re also a bit dry. The voices on Sea Priest are quite threadbare, there aren’t many harmonies (aside from when Williams and Duff sing together on tracks like ‘April/May’ and ‘Little Cowboys’) and the melodic range doesn’t shift all that much through the record. As a result, Sea Priest, while a solid debut record, is also a document of a band still finding a sound that fits them.

by Dom Alessio