FISH - Suits (1994)

Suits is the first slice of Fish the indie rocker.  I think most would agree that professionally speaking, this is his niche.  As much as the guy wants to be beloved (when he's not wanting to be left alone), it just makes so much more sense for him to be micromanaging his own record label, have complete creative control, and play to bingo hall sized crowds with whom he can make eye contact.  Now, some of this may be a self-fulfilling narrative, wherein Fish's endless series of personal and financial crises combined with questionable business decisions ensured that this was the only way his solo career possibly could go, but looking back at the complete body of work, it just makes so much sense.

Track One:  "Mr. 1470"

Slow grower for me, but grow it did.  There's a groove to the bassline as Fish's vocal delivery is especially chatty; there's enough momentum that I don't get impatient as the verses take their time building up.  I'm of two minds about the obscure lyricism here.  Suits is the first record in which one tends to fully process that Fish has a habit of talking in his own language that the average schmoe has no hope of understanding without help; "Mr. 1470" is the first track where that comes front and center.  If you haven't looked up what the song is about, I have no idea how one could put it together.  (It's not about a calendar year.  I believe, if I have the story right, that it was inspired by a museum encounter with an influential proto-human skeleton labeled as "1470," and so the singer is imagining what Mr. 1470 would think of humanity today.)  However, once one has that context, it's kind of a great lyric, innit? 

There I stood, face pressed against the window

I know his number, but I'll never know his name

Behind the glass buried in the sockets

A recognition, my skin begins to crawl

We learned to love, we learned to kill

We taught ourselves to rule this world

But who's the one that we're frightened of?

We are the sons of 1470

That's kind of good and proggy, right, hitting hard as a casual listener and then hitting harder once one dives into it.  And the tune sets a theme for the record, casting the trappings of everything else as "suits."  After an overlong intro that has the mid-80's calling (somehow this record wasn't a massive smash in the era of Smashing Pumpkins!), we move on to the big first single...

Track Two:  "Lady Let It Lie"

... I don't get it.  At all.  I mean, I don't quite hate "Lady Let It Lie," so much as I'm completely baffled by everything about it.  Is it a guitar driven rock ballad or a textured percussion piece?  Is it a genuinely mournful broken-relationship song, or an angry haranguing of a bitch who's using the song's narrator?  Either way, how does anything in the verses set up the "all the boys want to be..." chorus?  What is that key change just before 5:00 that turns the chorus into  shrill choral thing?  What even is any of this?  Will it ever end?

Track Three:  "Emperor's Song"

At least it rocks and has a solid hook.  This most recent listen to "Emperor's Song" made a tune that's always been on the edges of clicking for me work better.  I could cringe over the faux-"Oriental" sound effects, especially on the intro, or I could just savor the fact that the chime-heavy percussion has a legitimate groove to it, complemented by the singsong vocal pattern.  Even if this is one of many songs in which Fish is being a petty little bitch (I mean that with love!) about his lot as a commodity for the entertainment-industrial complex, he keeps the lyrics vague enough that they feel more universal.  I do wish the chorus had more to it; as it is, not only is it a bit simple, but the useless last minute of the song that repeats said chorus over and over and over gets tiresome.

"Emperor's Song" is the first of I believe three songs to mention a "bandwagon."

Track Four:  "Fortunes Of War"

Suits has some tiresome tracks overall, and it has some songs that're on the cusp of being great yet don't quite stick the landing.  For me, "Fortunes Of War" falls into the latter category.  I can see all the elements of a potential classic here.  Fish had had elements of this lyric clicking around since the Marillion days; one can see why he hung onto it trying to get it right.  No, he is not the first performer to make note of war's propensity for chewing up young men* by the thousands and leaving them as broken shells, but, well, Fish has a way with words while playing with a familiar theme.  

I heard a wheelchair whisper across a stale, stagnant gymnasium
Trailing an ivy league jacket like a matador
Through the jitterbug steps of the night before
I followed him down to the church parade
Where he makes his peace every armistice day
I watched him fade away, melt in the autumn rain

So, we're back in the "Chelsea Monday" zone of painting a picture with words, where I kind of like Fish to focus his efforts.  The piano parts soar.  The longing minor key chorus is a solid hook.  But I'm listing individual elements.  'Fortunes Of War" as a whole is good.  It is far from great.  At least for me.  Maybe the saxophone is the problem - way too much sax.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that sax and rock are uneasy partners; sax can sink all but the very best rock songs.  Or maybe it's the eight minute ballad factor.  The song is an eight minute ballad.  That's a lot of ballad.

Track Five:  "Somebody Special"

Another interesting effort instrumentally, sounds like a Spanish guitar as the accent to a propulsive bass part.  Here the vocal melody doesn't really go anywhere, and I can't say I'm too interested in the character portrait**.  SS is the second song to prominently feature suits in its chorus.  Having the two "suits!" songs as #1 and #5 doesn't really tie the record together quite like intended .  Oh, and I really hate the outro of this one.

Track Six:  "No Dummy"

Say what you will about Suits, let it not be said that there's not a serious effort to get out of the confines of the guitar-bass-drums rock paradigm.  Problem with experimenting is that not every experiment works.  I kinda get what "No Dummy" is going for, using a beat to gradually strip away the artifice from yet another character trying to get ahead, revealing him as someone playing the games that he learned yesterday (so to speak).  "Kinda get" does not, however, mean that I enjoy listening to the turgid beat together with chants of "me no dummy!" for six minutes.  A slightly interesting failure.

Track Seven:  "Pipeline"

Oh look, Fish is thinking about himself and where he fits in again.  I guess it's better than the non-narratives of the last few songs.  I know he likes this one quite a bit.  Another nice collection of elements including a simple key figure that drifts over the guitars and drums more and more as the song goes on.  The backing music during the chorus makes it sound sterile and brittle, and the faux-Arabian bridge (the bit that starts with the line about the flying carpet) is too slow and inert.  "Pipeline" is fine overall for most of its length.  The final minute of the song starting around 5:30 is a really satisfying progression to one of the record's few great endings.

"Won't you plaaaaay my song?"  Sorry, dude, you're an indie rocker now, the DJs don't care about you anymore.

Track Eight:  "Jumpsuit City"

Okay, for all my highfalutin attempts to describe music, sometimes all you need is a hook to make me say "I like how that sounds.  It's good."  Although I hadn't listened to Suits in a good few months before re-listening for this project, just thinking about this record got my brain locked into "tradin' in bones!" and "from Jumpsuit City!"  I could criticize not knowing how anyone is supposed to know where "Jumpsuit City" just from the song.  I won't, because I can be simple sometimes.  Just give me a good hook and sometimes I'm happy.  Hang a dark lyric ("what happened to the body of the child she bore?") off your best hook, and I'm happier.  Throw in a back and forth conversation between some especially rich synths and the rock guitar and I just might hug you.

As usual for Suits, song is about a minute longer than it ought to be, thanks in this case to an interminable outro.

Track Nine:  "Bandwagon"

I don't know if the premise of a "band-wagon" exporting the newest trends quite counts as a play on words, but either way, it's comin' into town.  Pretty nice hook, not a whole lot to the song beyond that.  "Bandwagon" transitions both musically and thematically into the final main track.

Track Ten:  "Raw Meat"

Picking up lyrical motifs introduced in "Bandwagon" and others, RM is definitely pitched as a summary statement for the Suits records as a whole.  I remember when first hearing Suits that "Raw Meat" was a breath of fresh air.  I've always categorized it as one of Fish's all-timers.  So it was a bit surprising on relisten to recognize that my inability to pay attention to the whole thing without my mind wandering is a chronic condition.  "Raw Meat" is so very languid for much of its length, and once past the harp-sounding intro, it doesn't give me much to grab for its first half.  Yes, like anyone who's ever been pop-star adjacent you don't like being a product, I get that, as I did the first twenty-eight times you mentioned it.  At least he frames what exactly it is he's looking for in a marginally interesting way: "some sort of reaction is all that I need."  Yeah, he needs to be a minor indie musician playing relatively intimate gigs.

So why did I remember "Raw Meat" so fondly?  The answer starts at 4:20.  The change in the mood of the song is signaled by a simultaneous key change and vibe change.  The triumphant keyboard riff that will anchor the last portion of "Raw Meat" appears in the background and forces its way to the surface as Fish starts biting off his vocals in forceful short sentences to mirror his transformation from agonizing and questioning to trying to own his niche:

But if that Bandwagon takes off for another town
And the suits that buy the wine, they don't like my song
Well, though I'm playing to empty tables 'till the curtain falls
I'll always have the strength to carry on

I'll always have the strength to carry on (raw meat)!

The effect is positively stirring.  That single minute of music from 4:20 through around 5:15 is what the track and arguably the record was building towards.  This is Fish's mission statement.  He's nobody's fool but his own.  I'll leave it as an exercise to the listener to decide whether all that buildup was worth it, given that I can't even always decide how I feel about it between listens.

Non-album tracks:

Both are interesting spins at least once or twice.  "Out Of My Life" is a look into a parallel path that "Bandwagon" could have taken (with at least one phrase that made its way into "Raw Meat" thrown in too).  Despite some clunky lyrics***.  OOML is... fine, I guess, about equally fine as "Bandwagon" is.  Meanwhile, "Black Canal" is something actually different.  Fish is in storyteller mode here, building a soundscape and heavily leaning on spoken word passages in a way that he really doesn't on any of the other tracks here.  And hey, here's another reference to a suit, and another reference to the flower from the buttonhole from "Jumpsuit City..."  "Black Canal" is like a parallel direction of where the whole record could have built to instead of or as a supplement to "Raw Meat."  Maybe the proggiest piece of the whole Suits project!  So, yes, I'm interested in "Black Canal."  I'd gladly take it over a few of the tunes that did actually make the record.

Final thoughts:

Hey, Fish, any chance you could quit starting so many songs with a breathy intonation of the title?  It gets old really quickly.  Thanks.

I feel like among the Fishheads - that's a thing, right? - this is where things start to diverge.  The casuals were still hanging around while Fish still had mainstream ambitions, but Suits is where we start to separate the die-hards from those who're hopping off this particular (band)wagon.  Well... I have to say it, I love Fish, but I've never really loved Suits.  I find it to be one of the Big Man's least interesting efforts, from one of the least (musically) interesting periods of his career.  Certainly there's good stuff here, as there always is.  There's also very little in the way of prog ambition - songs with parts and tempo changes are replaced by songs with fewer ideas that just go on for too long.  There's way too much about being a musician to which I don't relate.  As always, those could all be rationalizations to try to put a reason on why my ears respond as they do; maybe it's all just not enough hooks and too much sax, and that's that.  

I also feel like 1994 is where the shift occurs with final-lineup Marillion taking the majority of the Fish-era Marillion fans with them going forward.  Sure, plenty still listened to both.  But the way I see it, through 1991, Fish was creating vital and interesting music and getting a fair amount of attention, whilst Marillion were visibly flailing as they tried to sort out what they were (their 1991 effort, Holidays In Eden, was pretty universally regarded as a major decline compared to both Seasons End and the Fish-era stuff).  But then Fish puts out an uninspiring covers record, followed by a polarizing record that's not especially proggy, whilst Marillion spend two-plus years slaving away to emerge with their masterpiece, Brave.  Brave pretty much kills Marillion's prospects as a mainstream act, but it earns them a lifetime pass with the prog devotees.  You can see why someone who hadn't had much time for the "h era" before might abruptly decide that hey, that's the band I fell in love with, right there.  Forget that Scottish bloke singing, often in no recognizable key, about being no dummy.  What I feel way too few people realize, though, is that creatively speaking, the pendulum was about to swing back hard the other way, and would continue swinging back and forth for the next few decades.  There's not much to that other than that, at least to me, Fish's best material tended to be released during Marillion's "down" years, and vice versa.  It just often worked out that way.****

I will say that Suits feels a lot like a true solo record.  As I alluded to above, there's not really a consistent lineup of musicians or instruments, a consistent tone, a consistent music style... the main thing the songs have in common is that they're written and sung by the same guy.

Personnel notes:  Final collab with producer James Cassidy, who handles roughly half of the keys (Foss also plays quite a bit on Suits).  I'm sure he's a fine person personally, but to me, James is no replacement for Mickey Simmonds as a songwriter.  Still doing the two guitar thing with Robin and Frank, and Suits is the last Fish record for prolific journeyman bassist David Paton, who gets some songwriting credits.  Lorna Bannon, who I know nothing about, seems to be the designated female backing vocalist for like 90% of Fish's work, despite some of the other ladies he's toured with getting a lot more hype nowadays. 

Favorite track:  "Mr. 1470"

Runner up:  "Jumpsuit City"

Least favorite track:  "Lady Let It Lie"

Rating:  3/5

Definitive running list of records by Fish/Marillion that I have profiled so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality 

1)  Clutching At Straws

2)  Misplaced Childhood

3)  Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors

4)  Internal Exile

5)  Fugazi

6)  Market Square Heroes (single)

7)  Script For A Jester’s Tear

8)  Suits

9)  Songs From The Mirror

Both since streaming has basically scrubbed the existence of Yin and Yang from collective memory and because I want to get on with the new material, we continue with Sunsets On Empire whenever I get around to it!

*And nowadays in our enlightened era, women too!

**I don't know whether to grin or roll my eyes at the strange Eagles reference in the second verse

***I choose to imagine that the bit about friends saying people are the perfect couple would have been eventually been replaced given another few drafts

****Before I started my little blog, I had the mental image of a Fish-vs-Marillion web page, purely for the lulz, analyzing and comparing records that the two camps released.  Go track by track, or do it as a whole.  Sunsets vs TSE.  Feast vs Sounds That Can't Be Made.  And so on.  I haven't actually seen anyone else doing that, despite the fact that I know for a fact that there are plenty of people (including, uh, me) who're fans of both Fish and latter-day Marillion.  I might even have called it something clickbaity like "Fish Is Better Than Marillion!!!1!!11!"  The track-by-track comparisons would've led to these bizarre random matchups like "Rich" (from marillion.com) vs. "Tilted Cross" (from Raingods With Zippos).  However, the flaw in any project like that is that the narrative would be "artist X released A.  Independently of that, at a kinda similar time, artist Y released B.  X and Y continued to not really have anything to do with each other."  There's only so much one can do with that.