FISH 8/15, Park West Not to be confused with the homophonous hippie band, the former lead singer of Marillion has made a comeback album brimming with the AOR-friendly high prog that you didn’t think anybody made anymore. Fish’s enhanced CD Sunsets on Empire is the real thing, full of deep and dense ruminations on love and war, with obligatory references to “kings, queens, and pawns” to keep it vintage and “roadside gangstas” to make it current. Most embarrassing is “What Colour Is God?,” wherein Fish gets both preachy and phunky–in a Fil Collins sort of way.
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OBLIVIANS 8/15, Empty Bottle On their fifth album, the new expositorily titled …Play 9 Songs with Mr. Quintron, this hard-living Memphis trio gives new meaning to the word “drive”–right out of the garage on a road trip through gospel and soul–and leaves most (other) pretenders in the dust. Former Chicagoan Mr. Quintron’s eerie organ fills add steam and cheese just where they’re needed; unfortunately he isn’t touring with the band, but a little bird at Crypt says he might join them later in the fall.
SNOTHEAD 8/16, Cue Club There’s no way to describe the sort of rock ‘n’ roll on Snothead’s Each It and I without a lot of hyphens, as in “old-new-wave-grunge-prog.” You don’t believe me? How else would you explain an opening track that sounds like a cross between Fields of the Nephilim and Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, or “Blip,” which is kind of the untrodden ground between the Cars and, oh, I don’t know, the Plasmatics without Wendy. Snothead’s big on causes, too, and its mission statement is nearly as dadaist as its music: “Each It and I protests FCC and Wal-Mart censorship, animal rights, the right to die, and other government policies.” The band donates ten percent of the profits from its CD to PETA–but no word about the poor doggie who’s caught pulling a Divine on the cover.
