“Baby Darling Doll Face Honey” isn’t just the title of the Band of Skulls debut album, and it isn’t the first line to leave Russel’s lips at the beginning of “Fires.” It’s the precise list of pleas you’d use to dig your way out of the doghouse when your name might as well be mud. And while this song may not be entirely about a girl, it’s safe to assume one might have something to do with it.

Fires, rendered this way, with three arms swinging in unison against six steel strings, feels warm, like the friction you’d feel from rubbing your palms together against a fading blaze; the flickering orange licking at your fingertips; and the blues at the base of the flame reminding you that “we are fires in the night, let us bathe you in our light, we are fires in the night, let us bathe you in our light.”

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