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Difficult to say. I haven't got it, largely because I know most of the band's history and various bits of anecdotal stuff off-by-heart anyway, and, like you say, it's pricey. Still intend to get it - I'll let you know when I do if it's any good.
I have to say that my opinion on Fish tends to fluctuate wildly depending on the song he's singing. So much of his solo stuff, for example, sees him, an independent artist, without record company advice, decent producers, or even a mate pointing and going "Oi! Fish! No!", singing tunelessly on badly produced soft rock crappery. Suits definitely suffers from that - it's quite often horribly to listen to, hearing the few good ideas drowning beneath utter rubbish. As he's gotten older, his voice can't hit the high notes like it used to, and it seems to have taken him around ten years to get used to the fact that he was going to have to sing in a lower register. Most of the vocal performances during that period are pretty dire... some actually cringworthy, almost krap karaoke.
Not all of them, obviously. 'Credo', off Internal Exile, is a fucking gem... lyrical, touching, with the best use of a double negative EVER cropping up in the chorus ("It don't mean nothing..."). 'Sunsets On Empire', off the album of the same name, is marvellous, Watersesque stuff, with possibly the first example of the newer, full-throated Fish vocal. Pretty much all of his Marillion stuff sounds great, although he did well to ditch the purple poetry of Script... and Fugazi with Misplaced Childhood - not sure he'd have the 'working class hero' rep that he has if he'd carried on the way he was going.
I understand the problem you've got with 'The Last Straws's final lyrics, 40%, but to be honest, I think that was his point - he was pushing you out of his circle right at the end, pointing out the differences, because that's what addicts do - when they've had their way with you, sat you down through their sob stories, had you buy them drinks - they let you down. |
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