Fireworks Night - 'A Mirror, A Ghost' (Organ Grinder) Released 10/11/08

It's awfully difficult to gain a valid judgement on an album that sweeps you so far away from reality from the moment you vulnerably give it access to your eardrums. Old-fashioned but true to its gorgeously arranged, hand-made packaging, 'A Mirror, A Ghost' sees Fireworks Night becoming an authentic act, full of surprises for those who thought they had them all figured out, and with enough heartbreak in their words to allow you to shed an unseen tear in privacy.

But it's even more difficult to judge where the album will take you next once you've been willingly swept away. Song-by-song, it mischievously interchanges between a waltzy tone of cool ('The Shiver In Your Bones') to a shockingly blue blend of sentiment and disappointment ('Down To The Lake'). This is the case musically. A careful look-round and assessment will flip-side that entirely, with the latter becoming a gentle tribute of affection (the words "you are my favourite thing" glow in their simplicity) whereas the aforementioned dives into a nasty story of stubbornness to falling into the welcome arms of love; "if it's love, it's a sham" declares James Lesslie like he's heard the three magic words on a thousand occasions only to be unlucky time and time again. And this plays perfectly as a contrast to the bulky blasts of passion from some maddening backing vocals alongside jazz-hands piano, without the showing off.

It feels as if there's a definite change in attitude as the record progresses from its bed-ridden state of depression during the opening. The subject of love is dealt with differently each time, with 'You, Holding' suggesting a lucky jolt in a seeked bond; "how do I wait, so long?" is the echoing phrase as a previously messy musical affair, keeping in line with Lesslie's tale of indecision, suddenly sounds like it has a direction. A more melancholic 'The Fire' stifles away from the dominant subject before the previously cited 'Down To The Lake', as delicately as it can, proposes to a potential lover, "i could fill your glass, or you could fill mine" - this being the perfect example of traditional ideas being merged together by one that's been at the centre of poetry and literature since planet Earth first picked up a writing instrument.

Words can be as beautiful and eloquent as they want anywhere on 'A Mirror, A Ghost', but they simply wouldn't move us in the way that the closing number does. 'Echo's Swing' plays us a familiarly negative piano melody as strings seep in an out of the gaps in the background. As it happens, the lyrics are equally as heart-rending, Lesslie's smoothly-delivered narration quipping; "I am dancing with ghosts, of people I love". Anticlimax it is not, and it summarises entirely what this record stood for and what it set out to do.

At times it makes you feel queasy with excitement, other times dissimilarly battering away at you with truly upsetting stories hidden away behind the equally diverse musical attitude. And it becomes fascinating that an album verging so nearly on being dated in terms of voice, can make you feel so different from the moment you're swept away.