Why Should the Fire Die?
| Why Should the Fire Die? | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
||||
| Studio album by Nickel Creek | ||||
| Released | August 8, 2005 | |||
| Recorded | Barefoot Recording, Los Angeles, CA | |||
| Genre | Progressive bluegrass | |||
| Length | 47:12 | |||
| Label | Sugar Hill | |||
| Producer | Eric Valentine and Tony Berg | |||
| Nickel Creek chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| BBC | (positive) |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− |
| Harp | (positive) |
| Houston Chronicle | (positive) |
| Robert Christgau | C+ |
| Slant Magazine | |
| Stylus Magazine | (positive) |
| USA Today | |
| Village Voice | (positive) |
Why Should The Fire Die? is the third major album release and fifth album overall by progressive acoustic trio Nickel Creek. The album was released on Sugar Hill on August 9, 2005 in the United States, and on August 8 in the United Kingdom.Why Should the Fire Die? is the first Nickel Creek album to feature string bassist Mark Schatz.
The album peaked at #17 on the Billboard 200, Nickel Creek's highest position on the chart to date.Why Should the Fire Die? also topped both the magazine's Top Internet Albums and Top Bluegrass Albums charts. By November 2006, the album had sold 258,784 copies. The album earned Nickel Creek two Grammy Award nominations: the award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, an award which they previously won for This Side, and the award for Best Country Instrumental Performance ("Scotch & Chocolate").
Why Should the Fire Die? was praised by contemporary music critics primarily for its creativity, and for its instrumental quality, with one critic complimenting the album's "sheer musical brilliance".
We just met (Eric Valentine) and it clicked and he got what kind of record we wanted to make. The world's a big place. (Alison Krauss) would probably suggest we work with somebody different. There's lots of different people to work with and we have huge ambitions. We want to do something different with every record.
In the time that Nickel Creek spent writing songs for Why Should the Fire Die?, numerous songs did not make the cut, and only fourteen were used in the final draft of the album. When discussing the album, Sean Watkins said that the band "did so much co-writing together and filtering. I mean there’s like 30 songs that didn’t get used." After writing the songs, Sara Watkins said in her online journal that the trio spent five days "going over the details of the arrangements on each of the seventeen songs we're seriously considering for the record and making good demos of each of them". The band started recording the album in November 2004, and the album was "completed, mixed, and mastered" by April 2005.
...
Wikipedia