Labels: #1 Dad – Bear – Moment of Collapse
Review by: Andy Malcolm
I’ve had this one awaiting a review for a very long time now, which is a bit embarrassing as it’s not every day you get sent a double vinyl LP for review. I think I found the prospect of a double LP for review maybe a touch intimidating. I have heard quite a bit of their music over the years and had long forgotten about how they precisely sounded, but this collection of 15 melodic and powerful emo jawns shows that they were actually a really solid outfit. As the title suggests, they plied their trade between 2004 and 2008 and that’s firmly the sound they have, a period when Sinaloa, Hot Cross and Life at these Speeds started having an impact on new bands. FTC have elements of that sound and of course also take heed of the mid 90s too. This gives you tunes that are full of imploring, hoarse vocals and driving guitar that you can spazz out to. They also drop in quiet, mellow moments and even fall back on the old faithful trope of having an ancient blues record playing in the background on “…So Now He Trudges”. I like emo bands because they do this kind of thing utterly earnestly, there is no pretension here, no illusions that this is something other than an emo band. That’s just what I look for in this style.
For me, Fire Team Charlie are a decent entry in the emo genre from the first decade of the 21st century. Not a band that I will obsess over or get ridiculously excited by, but it’s been nice to revisit a period of emo that I haven’t come back to for a little while. This double record is entirely respectable and shows them as being a band worthy of your time if you are compiling a library of 2000s emo, albeit also a band that you might not come back to repeatedly unless they’re already firmly established in your affections, in which case you probably picked this up months ago.