"Fire Doesn't Care" by Robert James Grey

Before telling you something in order to whet your appetite for the new Robert James Grey single "Fire Doesn't Care" which is out tomorrow, I'd better first let you know something about his four previous singles ("This Town", "All Through Space", "Paradise is Burning" and "Past Lives") which I omitted from my reviews of all of them: in my defence because he's only just revealed it to me.

While not quite constituting a conceptual quartet, he considers that they "live in the same universe" and that there is "a thematic and sonic journey happening between" them: from loss to spiritual rebirth across the series of songs. Clearly passing this revelation onto you is important in order to increase your understanding of what he was doing with them, but also because he is emphatic that the new song is not an addition to the sequence but stands on its own both philosophically and in its musical style.

I'm sure part of leaving the reveal until now was useful so that both I and you could absorb each of the excellent songs entirely on its own merits and to be honest his more allusive & poetic lyrical approach means that divining the meanings of each was hard enough without considering linkages.

And so it is with "Fire Doesn't Care"…. you can certainly enjoy and appreciate this one, relishing the intensity of the thoughts it stirs up, without recourse to where it might sit within Robert's body of work, though fans will definitely appreciate the nod towards an earlier triumph in his own brief note upon it: "what happens when a hot headed narcissist and a fire starting avoidant meet? Chaos!"

Robert sings so confidentially & with such obvious honesty that there always seems deep autobiographical roots in all his songs: you are clearly peeking into his life & psyche without his needing to provide precise details: in that way he not only shows sensitivity & discretion but allows the listener to be able to relate his songs to their own circumstances. I am willing to bet that one of the protagonists is the writer himself though.

He just gets better & better at this sort of thing though: this one smoulders strongly due to the combination of adroit composition, intimate singing & his usual great taste in keeping the accompaniment simple & stark. He's one of those artists whose individual songs leave one sufficiently emotionally drained that one wonders what an album might sound like: you do rather need a breather after his tracks to take it in & recover.

In terms of the sound, the progression he cited actually increases the instrumentation a little beyond his trademark haunting piano: but certainly not to over doing it. There are emphatic touches of percussion & sweeps of strings to deepen the story in places.

Where I really lift my hat though is in the climax: there isn't one. A lesser artist would have built "Fire Doesn't Care" up to some cliched theatrical peak with a few operatic stylings, but Robert hasn't written a formulaic power ballad here: it's a steady remorseless burner as the narrator is engulfed by a force beyond his power to resist.