SUNSETS ON EMPIRE

This 6th release by solo Fish is almost a deceiving one. It suddenly struck me when I listened to it one more time. It starts with two excellent songs: The Perception of Johnny Punter and Goldfish and Clowns. These two are actually very significant songs because they embody the resurrection of the Big Man.

Let's face it, after a promising debut his next four releases were hardly more than mediocre (the ratings on our site say it all, don't they ?) and then suddenly out of the blue after three years of "coming to senses" a surprising come back with two of such impressive songs, in my opinion two of the better he ever did. So why deceiving ? Well, to be honest, even though the rest isn't exactly poor, probably even a lot more than average, they are absolutely less and almost go back to the former standard.

But that probably also has to do with the fact that the two mentioned jewels are pretty heavy for his usual style and the others are more normal songs, some of them even ballads. Again I can't call them poor or mediocre really, they are actually pretty good. But somehow I can´t shake off the feeling that if I would be in some store and I only would have time for the first two songs to check out I would undoubtedly say: well, this is absolutely great and buy the album immediately and then when I got home check out the entire album and felt just a little bit betrayed.

Just a thought, it´s the way I sometimes look at albums: how are they constructed, how are they arranged ? Anyway, all in all I believe this is a very good album, behind Raingods .. probably his best ever. It´s just falling short for a four star rating so I give three (3,4).