Electrico : Fire In The Sky
Nostalgia strikes like an uppercut on Fire In The Sky, the comeback single from local legends Electrico, and what a return to form it is! Unlike their previous hits such as Runaway or Love in New Wave, the new track adopts a slow-burning energy , comfortably easing the listener into the band’s brand of anthemic indie rock.
Right from the song’s intro, its composition of laid-back, grooving drums and ethereal keyboard motifs blend together perfectly, immersing us in a melancholy that instinctively makes us look skyward, sighing in relief. With an anthemic guitar riff in the background, Electrico crafts a call-and-response dynamic with their keyboard's refrains, building up to the track’s powerful chorus. It becomes a catchy and cathartic singalong: “So if the sky should fall, I’ll see within / And if the walls come down, I’ll see within / Maybe the rivers run dry, but I’ll see within / If there’s a fire in the sky, I’ll see within,” vocalist David Tan sings on a soaring refrain.
As much as I am a sucker for interludes without pre-choruses, the interlude before the second chorus could have been better executed in the mix. There’s a jarring amount of low-end, likely caused by the way the floor toms were mixed. Although the track’s vocal melody is genuinely catchy and engaging with its memorable highs, these low-end frequencies muddy things up a fair bit.
On a first listen, the instrumental section after the second chorus initially seemed to drag along, with Tan’s impassioned ad-libs and lyrical tags doing little to salvage the section. However, this all pays off towards the song’s end – as an understated filter sweeps across the track, they break into a short two-bar chorus tag, before William Lim Jr’s drums count us in for a final one and a half beats. With that segue, Electrico explodes into an extremely gratifying outro, closing out the track with brilliant fireworks.
With Singapore’s current music landscape, where there is no lack of good music and publicity, we sometimes tend to forget the ones who came before us. Although Electrico was not the only one, they were one of the few pioneers who made Singaporeans realise that amazing music could be made on our very shores, and on Fire In The Sky, they remind us how they captured our hearts in the first place. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and man, these giants are still a force to be reckoned with.