A saxophone screams through 'Decomposing Trees', and a guitar solo blazes on 'Strange' — yet the album they belong to is often called slowcore and dream pop. That tension sits at the heart of On Fire, the second studio album by the American indie rock trio Galaxie 500, released on 20 October 1989.
A saxophone screams through 'Decomposing Trees', and a guitar solo blazes on 'Strange' — yet the album they belong to is often called slowcore and dream pop.
Recording On Fire with Mark Kramer
The band was a tight three-piece: Damon Krukowski on drums, Dean Wareham on guitar and vocals, and Naomi Yang on bass. They recorded On Fire at Noise New York with producer Mark Kramer. The album opens with 'Blue Thunder', which later became the single, and includes ten tracks, among them a cover of George Harrison's 'Isn't It a Pity'.
On Fire arrived between the group's debut Today and their next album This Is Our Music, the middle entry in the band's discography. In 1989 the record reached number 7 on the UK Independent Albums chart compiled by MRIB. The album's reach also extended beyond its first pressing. In 1997, Rykodisc reissued On Fire with three bonus tracks: 'Victory Garden', 'Ceremony', and 'Cold Night'. 'Ceremony' was written by Joy Division's Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, and Bernard Sumner, while 'Victory Garden' came from Steve Cunningham and Mayo Thompson. The album runs 40 minutes, and its songs move between gentle drift and sharper bursts of sound. Chicago Tribune gave it 3 stars out of 4.
Critics embrace the album
Critics eventually treated On Fire as a landmark. Pitchfork gave the album a perfect 10 out of 10 score. Mojo awarded it 5 stars out of 5, and Record Collector did the same. The Rolling Stone Album Guide rated it 4.5 out of 5 and called it 'the band's best album by a wide margin'.
The praise kept compounding. In 2002 Pitchfork placed On Fire at number 16 on its list of the 100 best albums of the 1980s. Sixteen years later, the same publication ranked it fourth on a list of the 30 best dream pop albums.
Saxophone, guitar and cheap organ
What made the album stand out? Pitchfork singled out the 'blazing guitar solos' in 'Strange' and the 'screaming saxophone parts' in 'Decomposing Trees'. The genre labels — slowcore, dream pop, psychedelia — suggest something hazy and soft, but On Fire could also snarl. The saxophone came from Ralph Carney, and the guitar work from Dean Wareham, while Naomi Yang took a rare lead vocal on 'Another Day'. The album's textures were not only built from guitar and saxophone. Producer Mark Kramer also engineered the record and played what he called a 'cheap organ' on 'Isn't It a Pity'. That small keyboard part added another layer to a sound that could shift from gentle drift to sudden intensity.
The album never chased a hit. Some of its songs run past five minutes, and its mood is more about drift than hooks. Yet that patience paid off. On Fire was reissued in 2010 and reached number 45 on the UK Independent Albums Chart, a reminder that listeners kept returning to it long after its first pressing. The song 'When Will You Come Home' lasts 5 minutes, one of the longer stretches on the record.
By the time the reissue appeared, the album had already been absorbed into the indie canon. The 2010 edition also made it to number 10 on the UK Independent Album Breakers Chart, and the vinyl reissue from 2009 had given collectors a fresh way to hear it. None of this was loud or fast. It just refused to fade.
'Leave the Planet' is the shortest track on the record at 2 minutes. It is a fitting close to an album that has kept finding new listeners.