Butch Kassidy return with new single ‘Like Fire’.
If you’re listening to this track with headphones, a word of warning: ‘Like Fire’ immediately explodes into a frenzy-filled arrangement of post-rock clatter that sounds as if you’ve accidently resumed the song half way through after bumping into a friend on the street. That’s because, in essence, that is exactly what this track is. ‘Like fire’ is the second part to ‘Ascend’ on Butch Kassidy’s debut EP, a project that promises to give fans a complete body of work to get lost in.
Once the initial shock settles, ‘Like Fire’ tumbles into a high-tempo culmination of all the right elements of heavy, drum-led, guitar-licked chaos. The tracks structure feels deliberately disorientating, pulsating rhythms and sinuous guitar patterns build constantly before collapsing into an uneasy calm, only briefly though, before amounting momentum that hurls us towards the end of the song.
As with all great music, listeners are invited on a journey of interpretation, whether meaning is more opaquely apparent or requiring of a more in depth acquisition. The latter is something that Butch Kassidy encourage, “we hope anyone who listens to ‘Like Fire’ finds their own meaning with the song and lyrics. It’s not for us to say how it will make someone feel as we all feel something different when listening to music.” It’s this openness that makes Butch Kassidy’s work both accessible and profoundly personal.
The cryptic and obscure lyrics on ‘Like Fire’, phrases like ‘Lost man’, ‘Reach for the hour’ and ‘Breath in all the time’, enable this exploration even more. They place the listener in a vast, horizonless landscape which seems almost overwhelming, especially when paired with the tracks high tempo, anxiety laced soundscape. But, within this chaos lies an invitation to look deeper, to search for something meaningful amid the noise.
It would be easier to interpret ‘Like Fire’ as a morbid reflection of life, the fragmented imagery and thrashing instrumentation lend themselves to that reading, but often out of chaos emerges clarity and maybe there is something more redemptive beneath the surface. This coincides with the fact that ‘Like Fire’ is the second part of two. While it may seem disorientating initially, bear in mind that Butch Kassidy are framing this track and the meaning that may arise from it within a bigger picture. As Nietzsche once wrote, “you must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star”. Out of Butch Kassidy’s storm of disorientation comes an unexpected sense of clarity that is, like fire itself, unignorable.
Photo by Kitty Quinton
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