lungfish: classic or dud

New ZOMES is really pretty and a nice evolution. Features a Swedish vocalist whose name I didn't recognize singing and chanting over top of the loops. Very pretty.

Saw Higgs two nights ago in a tiny chapel in Bethnal Green - it was beautiful. He's gotten so good at the banjo! Playing with some unusual open tunings. Lots of good new material; lots of incredible-as-ever stage discussion.

Highly, highly recommend the Fountainsun album, "Music Today" - it's Higgs with a Japanese musician named Fumie Ishii. It's certainly the most structured thing Higgs has done in a long while, sort of the culmination of his last couple years of wandering. A real grab bag of cool stuff.

Theres nothing left to do
But go and ask the trees

Went on a bit of a Lungfish bender over the wknd, what an absolutely amazing band. Every yr that passes the fact that they existed in the 90s seems even stranger to me.

And it is weird to me to think of the word that Higgs is singing as "lyrics", I mean obv they are, but I can't imagine him sitting down and working & revising, they feel like they are being pulled out of him fully formed.

I have no clue what any of the songs are about.

I realize part of my love for this lyric is the notion of Higgs at concession stand getting a semi-flat soda in a paper cup is surreal in and of itself but so, this kind of reminded me of the side discussion of Neil Young lyrics that read as banal but convey serious import. This whole song, but this verse in particular, captures a kind of perfectly strange banality of daily life.

"I had a drink
At the concession stand
There was a dog digging
Through a garbage can
He whispered low
But I could understand

"Don't shun the world. Shed it""

https://youtu.be/tPqrn3j7YAI

Higgs is certainly a case in point of there being kind of a "totality" to his thing that works extremely well when experienced but is hard to sell on paper. I mean, the lyrics are wondrous and special to me in so many ways, but if you just write them out for someone I could get why they might not be sold, but they really work within the context of what he was doing in Lungfish. I mean, I like all the stuff he has done since then as well, but Lungfish will always be prime Higgs.

One of my favorite live Higgs moments was him giving a review of the Planet of the Apes movie reboot (whichever one was out in roughly 2011) in the middle of a long banjo improvisation. He kept playing during the whole thing, but the movie review was great and hilarious. And then he just tore into that banjo again for like another 15 minutes. Very compelling but I mean it sounds ridiculous in the telling of it.

My fave Higgs live banter was a long song intro about standing naked in front of full length mirror that segued into a longer side bit about why mirrors don't provide an accurate representation of your reflection since the glass is full of imperfections that you can't see so the image you seen in a mirror is actually a distortion of reality but the were the best tool we had and anyway here's Wonderwall

They were opening for Fugazi and though there Lungfish fans in the crowd for the most part the discrepancy between the mindset of the band the mindset of the crowd was like this *holds hands as far apart as possible*

Hah hah that is very Higgsian. I only ever saw Lungfish live once, and can't even remember who else was on the bill. My buddy Tyler and I both recall that Higgs actually ate a ballpoint pen onstage (no really) but I kind of find it hard to believe that it actually happened. I do not put his kind of thing past Higgs though ....

I believe the ballpoint pen thing, that sounds about right. I saw them three times in one yr, twice opening for Fugazi and once with Gas Huffer of all the random bands on planet earth, Lungfish played the same set each time, "Sound In Time" straight through.

The show with Gas Huffer was an early all-ages matinee so doors were at 4 in the afternoon, it at the 7th Street Entry in Mpls which is right down town and the back door was open to the street so there was light pouring in and you could see people walking around, city traffic, etc.

There used to be a coffee bar in the First Ave mainroom, which otherwise was closed & house lights were on and I was drinking a coffee and smoking a Backwoods cigar and Higgs was smoking a cig and we talked about how weird it was that I was smoking a Backwoods and also I was working overnights at the time so 4 PM was roughly 4 AM to me so this was all talking place within about 45 minutes of me waking up.

Wow. Quite a way to wake up.

ok I'm crazy but is it me or does the verse guitar rig/drumbeat of this Rickie Lee Jones song sound like Lungfish?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Gs1mDFuEM

riff