Brooklyn’s Stone Cold Fox is a band that doesn’t shy away from change. When it first found success with “Seventeen,” the band seemed poised to lead an infectious pop-rock charge. Since then, though, it’s dodged those simple classifications. Today, The A.V. Club is premiering “Firing Squad,” and while it retains all the energy of “Seventeen,” it opts for something far more ethereal. The track basks in a haze of guitar effects and subtle performances, proving that Stone Cold Fox can sound subdued without feeling lethargic. Of the song’s inspiration, vocalist-guitarist Kevin Olken Henthorn says:
“Firing Squad” was written in the winter of 2015 during a relatively long bout of seasonal depression. I have a super hard time with winters, especially in NYC. I pretty much walled myself up in my room and just watched movies and wrote music. So, at some point during a Woody Allen marathon, I ended up with “Firing Squad,” a very slow acoustic version, all miserable and shit. And I showed it to Ariel (former member/producer of the band) and he was like, “Wait, why don’t we just make this faster?” If you’ve heard the song by now, then you’ll notice it is definitely not an old sad bastard song anymore. And that’s something we do a lot in Stone Cold Fox. We take the basis of a song, the emotional fuel, and we try and flip it on its end and challenge its form. What started as a song about defeat, turned into a song about triumph in the face of defeat.