The Firebird Suite / The Firebird Project: Archives 1996-1998

The Firebird Suite, in addition to being a Stravinsky symphony, is also a band, or at least, is sort of a band. The elaborate story, as near as I can tell, is as follows: the Firebird Band consisted of Christopher Broach (Braid, L’Spaerow) on vocals/guitar/bass/keys/piano and Todd Finkel on drums. Broach formed two side projects, the Firebird Suite and the Firebird Project. The Firebird Suite consisted of Broach, brother Riley Broach (the Viper and His Famous Orchestra, I Am the Earth Made for Man) on guitar/bass/double bass, and Chris Wilson (Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Shake Ray Turbine, the Lapse) on percussion. The Firebird Project consisted of Broach, Wilson, and Pablo Gammeri (Runner) on bass/vocals. The CD Archives, the subject of this here review, features 11 songs by the Firebird Suite (two of which were on the out-of-print seven-inch, New York), six songs by the Firebird Project (originally released as the Feel Alright EP), and an unreleased bonus track by the Firebird Band called “Violet” (recorded during the same sessions that produced their The Setting Sun and Its Satellites album). Now that all that’s out of the way, are you confused? Well, you should be, and Christopher Broach should learn that there are other words to use in your many band names besides “firebird.”

Convoluted genealogy aside, the collected works of the Firebird Suite/Band/Project join together so seamlessly that it’s nigh unto impossible to distinguish when one group ends and another begins. Despite the occasional carryover of members, the continuity of Archives seems safely attributable to the consistency of Broach’s vision, the hallmark of which is the math-pop mixing of clean, thin guitar lines and complex beats into an angular yet catchy whole. It’s a difficult feat, and Broach’s ability to carry it off with an equal degree of success in three different lineups is commendable. Fans of math-pop generally or Braid specifically will find this collection of obscurities a likeable addition to their music collections, one worthy of some righteous air guitar in 9/8 time.

Others working from the outside in — lamewads who don’t know who Braid is, for instance — might find Archives less inviting. The very concept of math-pop seems inherently problematic, as if it were thought up on a dare. The simple pleasures of pop don’t naturally sit well in cerebral, prog-derived time signatures, and few people outside of Todd Rundgren circa 1973 find a good balance. Christopher Broach, unfortunately, doesn’t count as one of the blessed ones, and too often throughout Archives, he tacks a superfluous beat or two onto riffs that would almost certainly sound better without them. The jerkiness rarely passes the necessity test, and when making as many appearances as it does here, it starts to come across as willfully difficult. Broach could defend himself by saying that applying the standards of an arbitrary label like math-pop to what he does is an unfair disservice to his art, but while that point can and should be made, it doesn’t make the cognitive dissonance his music sometimes causes any more pleasurable.

To be fair, Archives has a lot more to it than this. Once the listener gets past the bumpiness of the ride (something that will certainly take multiple spins), these songs begin to reveal themselves more fully. When they do, they show Broach’s true strength: his willingness to leave enough space in each instrumental part to let the compositions reach a kind of balance that’s heard all too rarely in rock. Most bands write from the rhythm guitar on down with lead guitar, bass, keys, and drums serving as little more than embellishment on the basic riff, and it’s quite a joy to hear a songwriter who diverges from that approach.

Perhaps this advantage of Broach’s accounts for the disappointment that comes from discovering his big disadvantage, namely, the monotony of the mood that prevents these songs from being solid listening from start to finish. You can point a finger for this at the patchwork nature of the CD; after all, these 18 songs weren’t written to be heard as a piece. But you must then point a longer, bulkier finger at Broach’s ostensibly limited emotional palate, one that seems to mirror that of indie rock as a whole. His angst, brightly on display, isn’t different enough from that of countless other unshaven, mainstream-hating, Pitchfork-praised acts to avoid unleashing a regrettable flood of familiarity. If, however, Broach decides to temper his love affair with gratuitous angularity and maybe start taking some Paxil, he’ll probably have something good on his hands.