The Echo Friendly – “Supplies For Arson”

The Echo Friendly’s “Supplies For Arson” begins with some spoken word about the song title and “the Pencil Factory,” which probably isn’t about setting a Dixon Ticonderoga plant ablaze so much as it is a reference to this bar in Greenpoint and this boy/girl group’s tendency to go from flames to ex-flames: The Echo Friendly is Jake Rabinbach (ex-Francis & The Lights guitarist) and Shannon Esper, a pair of North Brooklyn residents who have turned the melodramatics around their ever-shifting relationship status into an song-cycle about it. (Think The Kills, though less slinky/more indie-pop/more romantically involved.) If you watch the show Girls, you may recognize their song “Same Mistakes” (and if you didn’t watch it, you can probably still guess what the track’s about). “Supplies For Arson” is just as direct, but for the opening’s double entendre, and its video frames their “are they, or not” story arc into a three-and-a-half minute video vignette.