The Benja-man Is Verbose

Still a little in-house project, with our trio of Anna, Ivo, and Merlin being the co-credited songwriters for everything, and the only musicians credited for playing on the record. Track One:  "Pain" It opens with two clear sounds - a pulsating guitar that'll soon resolve into a background metal riff, and a lively hurdy-gurdy overlay that basically acts as the lead stringed instrument, handling the main riff.  This will be a recurring theme.  Once Anna starts singing I hear hudry less, and the song seems a little less hard-rocking than you'd think, although it's got a bit of a rock chorus.  The best hook here is the "day in, day out" part.  The best section is the instrumental break in which the opening progression serves as the basis for a full-on hurdy solo.  The lyrics are cryptic and some delivered in a breathy wispy style that I don't love, but I gather that either Death or a human child is being scapegoated or something, setting the scene for..

I feel like anyone reading this would know the mythology behind 13th Star .  But just in case - Fish was on the cusp of getting married (to Heather Findlay, another prog singer), he'd written a few songs, the relationship ended abruptly and very badly, he went into pissy mode and wrote a bunch more songs that skewed, to say the least, angry.  Bassist and BFF Steve Vantsis, who'd never been a songwriter before, had a few musical ideas that he shared, they discovered they meshed great, and the rest of Fish's career would have a stable main songwriting collaborator.  We ended up with sort of a loose concept about a character's search for his "13th Star" (in Fish lingo, he apparently decided that each of the most significant women in his life was a star, because, uh, reasons) and a bunch of breakup songs.  Gavin Griffiths continues to be the most frequently employed drummer and Foss Patterson returns on keys. In more recent comments, Derek has opined that the reco

Field Of Crows is kind of a record of contradictions, and I'm trying to get my head around my exact thoughts.  Even the title of the post refers to the fact that more than five months elapsed between its mail-order release and its retail release, such that release date could be said to be 2003 or 2004.  The record is a stripped down rock oriented record that sheds the layers of instruments, female backing vocals, and arguable excesses of the Fellini era... to come up with a collection of songs that includes none under five minutes, in a record that's over sixty-five minutes long.  That's a lot of Fish for something not designated as some kind of "double album."  Suddenly, the principal songwriters besides Mr. Dick are guitarist Bruce Watson and Scottish composer/producer Irvin Duguid.  Because... uh, why not?  Although it's good to have Tony Turrell back on board and a co-writer on arguably the two best tracks here (will I conclude that they are?  Well, here&#

When listening to music with which I'm not familiar, knowing that I'm going to have to write about before listening again, it helps to mentally jot down notes of major things.  When there are a lot of songs and a lot of music (and while I'm walking or whatever I may also be getting distracted by other things), only a few notes can be held in a brain at a time.  On this particular occasion, though, I'm actually in front of a screen while sitting and doing my second listen to I Am Easy To Find .  So this is about the closest to a "reaction video" that I'm capable of doing as a blog post.  These are the most prominent thoughts and impressions, only lightly filtered, that pass through my mind. You Had Your Soul With You:  Closer to a rocker than I usually expect from a National opener.  I like the frenetic strings, but that start-stop distortion used throughout the song is pretty distracting. Quiet Light:  Not only does the track sound like it could have been

Another new lineup and another new homegrown record label for our man Derek.  Here things are more consistent - most songs written by Fish and guitarist John Wesley, with or without keyboardist John Young, and basically the same musicians on every song.  Stevie Vantsis is fully ensconced now as Fish's (almost) permanent bassist.  We're up to two female backup singers, neither of whom we've seen before or will see again.  With the title of the record, Fish is talking in his own language again - not only will he be on "Chocolate Frog Records" (see Raingods With Zippos for no explanation at all for the phrase) for the rest of his career, but he names a project after a term he'd been throwing around for years.  On the Raingods expanded edition he introduces a live "Plague Of Ghosts" with a little anti-suicide speech that ends with an admonition that "there are always Fellini days."  What does that mean, exactly?  Days in which strange and whims