13TH STAR

Fish's run of studio albums since Sunsets on Empire continue to show a high level of consistency, though I confess that on this one that selfsame consistency starts to get repetitive. 13th Star essentially finds his songwriting following the general principles he's followed from that point, right down to basing several songs around the dramatic repetition of the title to a slightly irritating extent (Square Go and *especially* Manchmal are chronic for this).

The familiar refrain of "Where do I go from here?" from Clutching at Straws raises its head again - which must have made for some electrifying concerts back when the album came out, since it was premiered on the Clutching at Stars tour which mixed together songs from the two albums - and the parallels drawn do make sense, since once again we find Fish in a self-critical mood. Whereas Clutching saw him tackling the difficulties of his relationship with alcohol, 13th Star analyses his romantic history, which has never been particularly stable, and finds him pondering how things just never seem to work out for him in that regard. It's fairly raw subject matter, in other words, though Fish once again does a great job of crafting a listenable and entertaining album around it, though I find that if you already have his solo albums that came out between this and Sunsets this doesn't really add anything truly unexpected to the canon.