Search - Fish :: Suits

Fish's Best at the Time

Christopher Dudley | Laurel, MD USA | 06/08/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Though Fish has continued to release good new music after leaving Marillion, it's always felt to me like there has been something lacking. Whatever that quality was, I think he found it for this album. The production quality of "Suits" shows a vast improvement over Fish's previous efforts. The sound is so much fuller and richer throughout the whole album. The lyrics are some of the best he's written in a while, and the music has a more intricate quality.

The first song, "Mr. 1470" (not Mr. 147, as the track listing reads), sets the mood of the whole album. In the liner notes, Fish explains that as he was looking at an exhibit of 1470 Man in a museum, it occurred to him that he could be looking at a long-lost ancestor. He shares his musings on how humanity got to where it is today. "We learned to love, we learned to kill/ We taught ourselves to rule the world." In "Fortunes of War" he contrasts children playing at war with the brief sad image of a disabled vet still living with the reality. Probably the weakest song on the album is "Raw Meat," the requisite Fish ballad that closed the original album, before the bonus tracks were added. The bonus tracks are good, too. "Out of My Life" is a sort of short folksy jig about attempting to exorcise the lingering feelings after an ended relationship, and "Black Canal" is a spooky tale of an encounter with a stranger.

With this album, Fish seems to have arrived at a sound he'd been looking for in his two previous efforts. It remains a favorite in my collection."

A musical triumph!!

luco | Panama | 12/08/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was under the wrong impression that this cd was one of Fish "not so good" works. Maybe because it was a "hard to find" cd badly promoted and also one mentioned in not so good terms by the artist himself. I got this cd just one week ago when i saw it alone at a cd store and decided to buy it. And what a surprise!! it is an excelent cd equal to all the other works an artist of this caliber can record. It is maybe his more personal work and simply is a marvelous colection of songs and very well produced."