FISH - 13th Star (2007)

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 record is more about him than about her (oh, there's a shock), and that this was yet another of his periods of searching for identity.  In this case specifically falling into the trap of believing that someone else would "save" or "complete" him, and picking the wrong person to put all that on.  After all the times he's been lost and self-found, shouldn't he know better?  Well, maybe not.  The happy endings of songs like "Plague Of Ghosts" concluded with a woman by his side, and the sad endings of songs like "Scattering Crows" featured him reaching out for a woman.  So, I guess the author of those pieces might be uniquely vulnerable to heartbreak.  Anyway, let's find the plot and hopefully hear some good songs on a record that's a little shorter than the last few. 

Track One:  "Circle Line"

We open with a distinctive baseline that's, uh, a set of electronic sounds of some sort.  This resolves into a rocker in which the synths coexist with an actual bass.  Okay, I'm engaged.  I have "Circle Line" in my head as a slow song and always forget how strong a groove the track has, which is important given that it doesn't really have a chorus.  Fish is in quality efficient wordsmith mode as he paints a picture of a (literal or metaphorical) underground in which the narrator "always depart[s] but [he] never arrive[s]."  The character ultimately gives up, as a background figure handled mostly by the keys lulls us to a stop, concluding with the track's catchiest hook - "navigator, I need a navigator."  Well, what could possibly go wrong there?  I can't say I often seek out "Circle Line" to listen to or think about it often, but maybe I should; it's a good'un.

Track Two:  "Square Go"

Okay, am I the only bothered by the fade-out between tracks one and two, given that the main repeating guitar riff of "Square Go" is basically the "I need a navigator" part from "Circle Line?"  Wouldn't it sound cooler if the one track bled directly into the next? 

Anyway, narratively I'm not sure if the two geometric tracks are actually liked.  Musically they sound like such a pair and I can't really imagine hearing one without the other.  I guess where "Circle Line" was about being lost in a crowd, "Square Go" is about seeing enemies everywhere in a crowd?  "Square Go," which in my head I keep trying to paint as the heavier of the opening pair, is actually pretty placid until the big banger of a chorus.  Can't say I get it totally - no idea what a "square go" is, or what a character fighting against the world who could have been the subject of "Moving Targets" is doing on this record.  I really do like the riff, that's what I can tell you.  One of Fish's best spoken word parts ratchets up the intensity further...

Track Three:  "Miles De Besos"

The intensity now falls off as the record serves up a song that's really not for me.  Too inert for too long such that by the time there's an attempted hard-rock section it is far too late.  The use of Spanish guitar is admittedly a nice touch.  I just don't think that your fling in Chile is really an interesting topic for a song, sorry.

Hey, remember Lorna Bannon, the person I know absolutely nothing about who used to sing backup on a bunch of the Fish records?  Suddenly she comes in in the middle of the chorus to sing backup.  I think 13th is overall Lorna's final appearance in our chronological runthrough; always one of the more reliable vocal matches for Fish.

Track Four:  "Zoë 25"

Hey, this is different!  I wish "Miles" weren't thrown in so we didn't have two slow piano driven tracks in a row.  Anyway, it's nice to see pure narrative here, even if it's taken me a whole bunch of listens to figure out what exactly the narrative is.  (I'm ultimately going to say that it's profiles of two characters who completely miss a chance to connect as they drift through their troubled lives.)  For some reason I really like the flow of the lyric:

He lights the next last cigarette and promises himself
As he retches in the sink, to change his way

And then a pure pop melody as Fish plays the wise elder role, telling "you" that you need to find yourself before you can fall in love, basically; sounds like a life lesson.  At about 4:15 the strummed guitar and piano line may be even more pure pop and we end up at "the" Mickelgate in York where the lyrics get cryptic and ominous.*  Anyway, this one is a sweet and sad sounding tune.  I'm going to choose to take the fact that I don't totally understand the lyrics of "Zoë 25" either as a feature rather than a bug; keeps me listening again and again.

Track Five:  "Arc Of The Curve"

Okay, the breakup song to end all breakup songs (except that it doesn't, there are a bunch more coming).  "Arc" was the lead single, and when he came up with the chorus Fish says he truly believed that he'd written a big hit.  On the streaming services, apparently "Arc" picked up some traction in recent years and got people to check out the record and its artist.  So, this is the big one for this record, right?  

 

Well... yes and no.  I can't deny the appeal of the chorus, especially when Fish and Lorna sing counterpoints and then that descending piano figure calms the song back down to the verse.  Thing is, I'm not sure the rest of the song lives up to the chorus.  The verses are a plain sing-songy melody and the description of the love whose absence the narrator is mourning isn't anything we haven't heard thirty thousand times elsewhere.  I keep thinking that I should love "Arc Of The Curve" - seriously, every listen makes me wonder if I was misjudging it - yet I persist in merely liking it.

Track Six:  "Manchmal"

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!  The title appears to be German for "sometimes," and the central metaphor is the old chestnut about the turtle and the scorpion (although there's a mention of "the open water," making me excited to get to the next track).  Of all the angry rockers on the record, Fish and Simone seem to favor "Manchmal," which is a bit of a shame, because it's far from the best.  The guitar part is loud but it's basically two notes, and repeating the word "manchmal" over and over isn't really a chorus.  Couldn't he have built more of the narrative lyrics around the slow outro, which is a musically more interesting section, rather than just repeating the title a bunch at that point in the song?  Anyway, meh for me.

Track Seven:  "Openwater"

I've written about how I don't always know how to describe why exactly a musical motif tickles my ears.  In any case, here's one of those moments - the downbeat at end of each measure in which the string-like synths do a two-note counterpoint that makes a gorgeous minor chord with the main riff.  Like audio crack.  

 

Could do without the spoken intro, but once the song actually kicks in, ooh, it's so good.  Heartbreak has never been full of such righteous passion.  Every lick that whatever that instrument is that sounds like a bass synthesizer plays is brilliant.  I love the tin-can sound of the drums.  "Openwater" is a complex song that absolutely fucking rocks.  The fact that it's basically been overlooked even by fans of 13th Star is criminal.  This is the one that should have been a massive hit.

I just love the way the whole second verse rolls off Fish's tongue, and feel it so much that I in turn feel obligated to quote the whole thing:

I went down with all hands in the morning

I was clinging to the wreckage of the dream

Praying for a rescue that I knew would never come

I watched your sails disappear into the distance

I saw my life in the currents floating by

I was left to the mercy of the four winds and the tides

To carry me to shorelines where the sea and sands collide

If you want me, you know exactly where I am

I'm adrift in open water

I'm gazing at the stars

I'll be gazing at the stars

I think the song even earns its ending, which in a lesser song could feel petty.  The narrator looks forward to forging his own path, turning the final chorus into "sailing open waters" and "guided by the stars."

Odd personnel note:  Rather than Steve, longtime on-and-off Fish guitarist Frank Usher gets the cowriting credit for "Openwater," per Wikipedia, yet he doesn't even play on the song, with Mr. Vantsis handling both guitars and bass.  If true, where's he been hiding this compositional genius all these years, and why is Steve so great at bringing it to life?

Track Eight:  "Dark Star"

Oh look, it's a song about a failing relationship, how novel.  After some songs with some real maturity, "Dark Star" is kind of a step back; it's a mean song,** rather than a righteously furious one like "Openwater."  However, I can get behind "Dark Star" once it hits the chorus.  When paired with the big full-voiced delivery, the imagery in that part of the tune works a lot better for me:

I wanna be a meteor, I want to travel at the speed of light
Another dead star, silhouette against a pale moon
I want to crash into another world 

I enjoy the way the voices are doubled, like Fish is going back and forth with himself inside his own head.  Just when the song needs a little something extra to put it over the edge, the keys come in at about 4 min to provide a neat little two-note figure that will serve as the backing track for the solo and the outro, so props for composition.  I have never successfully paid attention to the last two and half minutes or so, so negative props for composition as far as still never knowing when to end a song...

Track Nine:  "Where In The World"

Slow build is pretty.  WITW is one of those ending tracks that takes forever to explode into its dissimilar second half***, which is a gorgeously sad little earworm that tells us clearly that everything is very much not going to turn out okay.  There's some backsliding here as the narrator apparently talks himself into thinking that things might not actually be so over.  I find that aspect tolerable because that all of that stuff comes in the plaintive second part, so I think we're supposed to read it as a bit pitiful.  And so "where in the world do we go from here?" gradually becomes "... do I go from here?" with some flipping between the two...

By this point of the record I'll admit that I'm pretty tired of breakup songs.  That says a lot - I mean, nobody can write a breakup song like Fish - I just wish he'd mix in something else.  This is one of the good ones, though.

Track Ten:  "13th Star"

I've never really understood the record's closing track, which I do think colors my view of the whole project.  Two slower ballads in a row feels like a letdown as the denouement for an album that's pretty heavy overall.  I also find this particularly tinkly piano part kinda insipid.  As far as lyrics go, who is the narrator addressing, whose love he already knows he can't live without, given that the conceit of the whole "13th Star" thing is that he hasn't met #13 yet?****  Who is following whom?  Is the star a person or a place?  "13th Star" (the song) is another one that simply fails to grab me.

Final thoughts:

We've entered the final phase of Fish's recorded output now.  The Fish oeuvre closes with just three records released over a fifteen year period, bridged by a bunch of tours and personal crises.  It's a period during which the musical partnership between Fish and Steve is most fruitful.  A period exclusively produced by Calum Malcolm - now that he's sat in the chair for 13th Star, nobody else will for the remainder of the big man's music career.  A period during which Fish increasingly embraces his status as a legacy artist (who still comes up with something new and interesting from time to time), and embraces his roughened mature voice rather than trying to sing the same notes he used to.  The narrative is that he has settled into his groove now, emerging from the wilderness years that spanned [insert whatever your least favorite Fish record is] through Field Of Crows, emerging with some late-career triumphs.

Permeating this review, you'll observe a sort of guarded enthusiasm for 13th Star.  I like it a lot.  Much like the song "Arc Of The Curve," I often wonder if I "should" like 13th more, and I keep finding a little something missing.  "Circle Line"/"Square Go" are a great one-two punch to set up a record that then rocks a little less consistently and turns into a bunch of single-minded songs about similar themes.  I'm not seeing 13th as some dramatic step up from the similarly uneven but similarly intermittently brilliant Field Of Crows, and honestly that may be a function of the fact that I like Field better than most seem to... and maybe very very slightly better than 13th.  

 

Yeah, in case it hasn't become clear, I really enjoy Fish's music overall, hence all the hairsplitting about the exact rankings of a bunch of 4/5 and 4.5/5 records.  And damn, the best parts of 13th Star are really, really good.

Favorite track:  "Openwater"

Runner up:  "Zoë 25"

Least favorite track:  "Miles De Besos"

Rating:  4/5

 

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)  Raingods With Zippos

4)  Vigil In A Wilderness Of Mirrors

5)  Internal Exile

6)  Fugazi

7)  Field Of Crows

8)  13th Star

9)  Market Square Heroes (single)

10)  Sunsets On Empire

11)  Script For A Jester’s Tear

12)  Fellini Days

13)  Suits

14)  Songs From The Mirror

We continue with A Feast Of Consequences whenever I get around to it!

*per Wikipedia, Fish proposed to the woman who'd end up breaking his heart at Micklegate

**The opening image of the fairy with broken wings comes from a moment of catharsis in which he destroyed one of his ex's fairy statues that she'd kept around the yard.

***cute bit of composition as Lorna's backing vocals abruptly join in on "would it bring us together?"

 

****Simone, his eventual wife?