The Detroit five-piece Fireworks’ 2011 record Gospel was pure pop-punk that smelled like teen spirit: frontman David Mackinder reflected on adolescent angst as if in need of tranquilizers, yet the slower-paced alt-country touch on songs like “The Wild Bunch” foreshadowed maturity.
Nevertheless, on Fireworks’ third full-length studio release, there is no real release from youthful confusion. If on Gospel Mackinder was able to negotiate a balance between the stupefying and the stupid, on Oh, Common Life he sounds as if he wants to jump off a cliff. Even more than Dan Campbell – bandleader of tour mates The Wonder Years – on The Greatest Generation, Mackinder seems resigned to the realities of encroaching adulthood.
Oh, Common Life carries on the pattern established with Gospel of stretching pop-punk tropes from the 1990s – in particular the daze of pre-millennial Blink-182 as well as the catchy California skate-punk that’s been back in vogue lately. Yet from the moment the record starts, there’s an instant feeling that the stakes have been raised – hovering below the bared teeth guitar riffs of opener “Glowing Crosses” is a sputtering drumbeat reminiscent of classic emo standard bearers from decades past such as Weezer or Saves the Day.
What separates this track from emo’s typical navel-gazing is that the “Glowing Crosses” are from the Detroit riots of 1967, which Mackinder’s parents lived through – it’s their point of view that he adopts when singing about “the tanks on the front lawn”. In one three-minute cut, the crushing weight of history comes crashing through his door.
Death looms large: “Bed Sores” reimagines teenage houses and basements as cemeteries, but ones that Mackinder “[wants] back in”; the drunken reverie of “Flies on Tape” leads to the singer “seeing zombie versions of [his] friends”; “The Only Thing That Haunts This House Is Me” finds Mackinder walking through life like a ghost, depressing everyone around him. Add to this the corroded guitar feedback used throughout and you get an LP that isn’t afraid of the tough stuff, which makes it feel out of place from pop-punk’s party as usual.
That’s where Oh, Common Life makes inroads to a larger audience, by serving up pop-punk to listeners who think they’re far too smart to go near it. (Witness Mackinder’s knowingness on “The Only Thing That Haunts This House Is Me”: “I use metaphors to write about what I really should say aloud.”)
Very much like the typical touchstones of modern millennial life, from Hannah Hunt to Hannah Horvath, Fireworks’ songs speak to a set of concerns that we all face as we get older. The difference is that these tunes use nostalgic sounds as a reminder of one’s youth, when memorable melodies once seemed to promise better – rather than bitter – days ahead.
Listen to Fireworks’ Oh, Common Life below: