Potential Falcon - Wings on Fire (Album)
Melbourne band Potential Falcon make pop music. Not trashy one hit wonder pop music, but pop music the way it should be made, like the Beach Boys and the Beatles intended it to be. Stepping out from their other bands momentarily (being aleks and the ramps and Plastic Palace Alice), the boys from Potential Falcon have almost hit their stride with Wings On Fire, delivering 10 pop songs that sometimes work wonderfully well, and sometimes fall just short of the mark.
Any flaws are mostly made up for by the songs themselves, all of which are beautifully crafted, melodic numbers that tell of love and loss, and stories from everyday life.
Opener For Melinda is pleasant, with nice piano and lush production. The lyrics, like most of those on the album, are sweet, sometimes sickeningly so, and the vocals are sometimes strained. The Simple Things, When I Get Old and Valentine’s Day all grate on the nerves a little for similar reasons, despite the fact that they are decent songs. But the musicianship and compositions make up for it some.
Single On The Road and Midnight Flights encompass what the band do best – melodic pop rock songs with feeling, harmonies, layers of instruments. It reminds the listener of the Posies for instance, which is no bad thing at all. Evergreen builds from a nice song into something more rocky, but lacks the punch to deliver on the promise.
There are flashes of musicianship that suggest something deeper going on than the 3 minute trademark song though, such as the outros to For Melinda and My Sweet Bride, the 70s guitar solo in Call A Cab, or the reworking of On The Road in Honey. In fact, the entire album showcases the talents of every member of the band, a mixture of clever drumming, harmonies, guitars, piano, and dashes of strings, organ and horns. The production and the musicianship both highlight and enhance all the individual parts, bringing each to the fore at the right time, combining them to great effect, lifting each song up a level.
There are faults, especially when the band try and fail to reach the mark they have set, or when they simply overreach it, but overall this is a fine album of pleasant pop songs. It would no doubt translate well in the live setting, adding a bit more noise and energy to the well crafted songs, building on the emotion already contained within each track, and letting the band work outside the framework of the songs a little more.
Having said all that, I have listened to it a bunch of times and I liked it. In a word – nice.
