- Catch
a Collapsing Star.mp3 (Full of Light and Full of Fire)
- Mysterious
in Black.mp3 (Full of Light and Full of Fire)
- A Damn Good Disguise.mp3 (Lost in Revelry)
- Something Dark.mp3
(Lost in Revelry)
Biography
Recalling in equal measure the passion and soul of early Pretenders, the wrecked majesty of Harry Nilsson's Pussy Cats album, and the humor and indignation of the great Mekons, the Mendoza Line's Full of Light and Full of Fire is a meditation on the abuse of power and those who are left in its wake: the spiritually and economically disenfranchised, the isolated and ruined, those who are lost or are simply trying to disappear.
Amid the record's potent cocktail of rousing drinking songs, spirited protest anthems, and fond narrative accounts of the frail and forgotten are the tales of a despondent young mother who pinches her sleeping infant to get his attention, and dreams of being swallowed by the ocean ("Water Surrounds"); a delusional world leader who declares "the fiction is fact!" and drives his country into war and chaos ("Pipe Stories"); an Oedipa Mass-like truth seeker obsessed with the uncovering of a secret conspiracy ("Mysterious In Black"); and a weathered and senile couple attempting to piece together the faded details of their life together ("Our Love Is Like A Wire"). Topical concerns loom, ominously shadowing more private and personal struggles. Shannon McArdle sings bitterly of the plight of the oppressed women of Saudi Arabia, placing herself in first person while recounting the various acts of boundless cruelty suffered at the hands of American allies in "Golden Boy (Torture In The Shed)."
Seven albums into their career, the Mendoza Line's rollicking sound is unmistakable; Full of Light and Full of Fire doesn't alter much of the Mendoza Line's musical blueprint, an elaborate alchemy of classic sounds with contemporary pop sensibility. But lyrically, Full of Light and Full of Fire is a subversive statement, an ambitious artistic feat penned in a familiar hand.
Moral bigots and moneyed self-interests have now, by means of subterfuge, slight of hand and sheer brute force, begun the process of inextricably changing the meaning and motives of that place the Mendoza Line calls home. They, in turn, offer this resounding valedictory summation of the themes of avarice, lust, lechery, and ethical and spiritual corruption which have long consumed them. The encroaching specter of government run amok and immoral is in evidence up and down the dial: "put on the hood/pull off the drawers," "I'm going to put the screws on you," "they can always read your mail."
This is the second Valley Forge: Full of Light and Full of Fire is something to keep warm by.
Revel in the fiction of this album's facts and vice versa. If ever there were a time for it, it's now.
