Fireflight

Fireflight has always been a band unafraid to offer heart-on-their-sleeves honesty, extending the same invitation to their listeners. With Who We Are, Fireflight is returning from a five year breather to offer up a powerful and timely identity statement. Who We Are, which will release as two parts (The Head and The Heart), is both a homecoming and something entirely new for the veteran rock group. For this project, founding guitarist and backing vocalist Justin Cox rejoined bandmates Dawn Michele (vocals), Glenn Drennen (guitar) and Wendy Drennen (bass), restoring the band’s founding lineup. Although the band’s last album, 2015’s Innova, was a venture into independently created electronic music, this time around the band set a course back towards rock and roll – teaming with Josiah Prince (Disciple) at the producing helm and a newfound partnership with Rockfest Records. Who We Are was created following years off the road, years where each of the band members had other jobs to provide financially– allowing them to return to making music purely for the music’s sake. “We said ‘let’s create another record, this time with our support coming from a label that’s independent, a label that’s created for artists by artists,’” singer Dawn Michele recalls. “It’s a totally different experience being able to create under those circumstances. I think it reignited the spark for us.” That reignited spark is exactly what you’ll hear on album lead single “ Who We Are,” a rousing rock anthem from The Head half of the album that seems custom-fit for current events – despite being written a few years ago. The song invites us out of helplessness and into our true identity. “As God’s children, we are the people who are supposed to be the ones who are showing love to others,” Dawn shares. “We’re the ones that are here to be a healing power for the broken systems, the things that are built around man’s ideas.” Many of the album’s songs are driven by the empowering truth that our actions, however small they might feel, truly do have the ability to carry eternal weight as we stand in the power we’ve inherited as sons and daughters of God. On the encouraging and melodic “Keep Your Head Up,” the chorus casts the truth of God’s presence with us into a reassuring reminder: “ through it all you’re never going to walk alone, I’ll take every step, every fall, by your side.” In the same way that Fireflight affirms the presence of God through our deepest struggles, they also invite us to be present with each other– something the band models by example. “We’ve always tried to be open with our struggles and open with where we are as human beings,” Glenn Drennen says. “I think that’s powerful, when you hear that someone you know understands where you are.” That’s the kind of solidarity that characterizes the album’s second half The Heart, especially the piercing ballad “I Believe You.” Dawn reflects, “I think most of all what people really want is to be heard. They want to feel like someone sees them, that someone hears them.” That dedication to the truth of human experience, in all its beauty and its pain, finds its way into the challenging “Welcome to the Show.” The track pulses darkly over heavy percussion as it lifts the veil of heavily-produced glamor that can often distract the Church from what really matters. “The authenticity that we need to strive for is addressed in that song,” shares Justin Cox, who speaks from several years of experience serving the church in a corporate worship setting. “This isn’t a show. This is your relationship with God. This is your relationship with the people that you go to church with. This is so that you know Him.” Who We Are continues to plumb the depths of vulnerability from beginning to end, moving from the raw confession and call for forgiveness in “ Bury the Dead ” to an honest look into relationships on “Arrow.” Musically, the band deftly moves between well-placed restraint in moments of acoustic guitar or keys (“