Heavy With Child

You stack up the evidence: flutes; fairy tale content; high-calorie but low-nutrition sax; evocations of CSN, America, the Eagles, Loggins and Messina, even the occasional hint of the Doobie Brothers. The case doesn’t look good for Firefall. The quality of mercy may be strained in this instance. The band occupies territory on the frightening borderland between soft rock Americana, latin-jazz-tinged fusion bombast (someone in the band likes Carlos Santana’s guitar tone), and possibly a fringe of showboaty L.A. studiocat-ville.

Get out your rock pedigrees though. There’s some lineage connecting these guys to The Flying Burrito Brothers (but the same is true of Manasas) and Spirit (whatever).

Firefall - "Cinderella"

War of the Worlds
I'm just gonna have to clear the decks here. All I have to say about this next track is this: H.G. Wells, Sir Richard Burton, Justin Hayward (frontman of the Moody Blues) and Phil Linott (Thin Lizzy). There's a track on here called "The Red Weed," which I kind of wanted to share with you, but I had to go with "Thunder Child" instead. I knew a band in Charlotte, NC in the '90s called Come On Thunder Child. I always thought it was a brilliant name, but never knew the reference.