The Jazz Butcher Press Compact Disc Connection
1993

Album Review: Condition Blue

Compact Disc Connection
1993

Credit: Roch Parisien

Condition Blue

For all the pain and crap from which this record was made, the actual sessions were a gigantic and wonderful party. This was warmly received by The Outside World, less popular among those who counted themselves JBC afficionados. This IS the sound of me having fun, and getting me to do that in those dark days of mid-1991 was no small job.

Over an uneasy nine-year, seven-album alliance with a sales-driven music industry, Fish has never taken the easy way out with a lyric. Condition Blue was inspired by a nervous breakdown Fish experienced towards the end of 1990. The album's barefaced and literal songs express Fish's observations as he worked to claw his way back to sanity.

She's A Yo-Yo and Shirley Maclaine erupt in frenzied bursts of driving guitar and feedback. Other numbers like Racheland and Still & All have a slow, glacial, beautiful, gothic sound. The highlight in this department is Harlan , Fish's gorgeous tribute to science fiction writer Harlan Elison. Over it all, The Jazz Butcher intones deep, resonant melodies, seemingly in calm control but always bordering the precipice that gapes just below the surface.