Song of the Evening: "Baby Blue"

Check out the rest of the Songs at this link right HERE. As you've seen over the past few weeks, this column is back, and tighter than ever. No blog posts over 500 words.

"Baby Blue"

Fishmans

Kuuchuu Camp

1996

The thing about starting with a band's masterpiece is that there probably isn't anywhere to go from there but down. The best bands cushion the fall, however. They have a couple other really good albums in the back pocket that you can swipe while they aren't looking, music that isn't going to live up to the art you originally fell in love with but is still great in many similar ways and slightly different in interesting ways that they are worth checking out still, no danger of broken bones or black eyes.

Long Season is the one to hear, if you haven't already. The few and the proud who exposed themselves to that bonfire three and a half years ago are still showing off their burns proudly. It's one of those albums that seeps into your souls crevices and before you know it you're sprouting black mold and you can't get rid of it even if you tried. But no wonder it's taken me so long to listen to something else by Fishmans. No wonder. What else could be like this.

Kuuchuu Camp (a.k.a. Kūchū Camp, a.k.a. Something in the Air) is not Long Season. It's not because nothing is or could be, even from the same band in (somehow) the same exact year. But it is something, and that something is more than worth it. Long Season had plenty of intrigue and more than enough stamina but more or less one shimmering piano hook that repeats over and over into eternity and also for 30 minutes at a time. Kuuchuu Camp doesn't have that. It's eight unique and separate songs. And yet...

...And yet, each song does indeed work like a mini Long Season. Each song has that distinct bite of sound or melody or percussive element or combo of sounds that it repeats and repeats like a koan. "Baby Blue" is the example you're getting today if you don't take the whole dive in. That flute part, five notes, all rising in pitch, gently layered on top of the shuffling beat and bubbling keyboard taps. It's in my head, man. It's in my head and it won't leave.

It's in my head until the next song hits, of course. It's like a diamond—the only thing that can cut a Fishmans is more Fishmans. Give me more Fishmans. More and more.