Fireball FC
Fireball FC is not the name of a country football club gathering local villagers for festive Sunday game. Although festive corresponds well to what this band offers. No, it is indeed a pop rock group from the Lyon region led by a certain Edward Bouillon
Fireball FC a French group of indie pop rockers, set out to prove itself. Through their music, they demonstrated that rock is not just a question of increasing volume and that they could marry melodies and guitars without sounding dated.
Born of consensual anti-hype and racy pop of the 60s and 70s, Fireball FC combines 70s prog / psychedelic rock, and 70s disco with astonishing ease.
It shouldn’t work, but it does, perhaps due to its mix of technicolour humour and bare-faced cheekiness.
Even the most serious Pink Floyd fan couldn’t help but crack a smile.
In The Beginning
Fireball FC have been around since 2003. Originally named “Fireball” the band released, ‘Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite’ (2004); a space epic and psychedelic homage to 2001, A Space Odyssey of Stanley Kubrick.
For this project, the boys borrowed the reverbed voice of Spector-esque productions, the naughty side of Wings (mixed with a ‘Glam’ elements), enveloped in the key Pink Floyd.
At the end of 2004, the band decided to re-inject colourful pop into the musical landscape; thus invoking the image and visions of Syd Barrett with a trendy fuzz pedal.
In addition, they released three albums, adopting the name Fireball FC for their second album ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone‘.
The group moved towards a more classic rock sound, recording their pieces with artificial double tracking. You’ll hear twinges of the Stones, Faces, Neil Young (with Crazy Horse) or Gainsbourg, without stepping far away from the craziness The Doors.
The crème de la crème of Lyon pop (Scalde, Selar, A-song, The Purple Lords, Deja Vu, Agathe Max, Seaside) collaborated on this opus; a complete album mixing folk ballads, pop nuggets, “hip” garage and Kronenbourg rock!
A compilation of titles from previous albums, Singles (2009) correspondingly similar to what The Hives did with “Your New Favorite Band.” The comparison stops there though; with conciseness and precision as the only common denominators of the two bands. The goldsmiths of chiseled melodies, Fireball FC navigated a bit further, somewhere between pop and rock.
Fireball FC offer small pop refrains of quasi- naivety, enriched by a multitude of discoveries; the kind of pieces that embellish a rainy (or snowy) Sunday morning.
RIYL: Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Rolling Stones, The Monkees, The Beatles, The Kinks
Playlists
Cage
by Ed Carlsen
