From very old music to music from just last year!
Disc 1645 is…The Highest in the Land
Artist: The Jazz Butcher
Year of Release: 2022
What’s up with the Cover? Pat Fish who is either a member of the Jazz Butcher or the Jazz Butcher himself depending on who you ask. I’ll pretend the band is Fish alone because he writes all the songs, and doing so makes it narratively easier to write.
Here we find Fish coming out of Gare Du Nord which is a major Subway station in Paris. I’ve been there and my advice is to keep your wallet tightly gripped throughout your experience because the place is teeming with pickpockets.
Fish seems unconcerned about such things as he nonchalantly smokes a cigarette. How very continental.
How I Came To Know It: I read a review of this record and decided to check him out. Shortly thereafter I ordered it from Bandcamp.
Did I give this album a chance because it has a song about a Jaguar on it? Or maybe because the band's title is an attack on jazz? I'll just say neither of those facts hurt its chances.
How It Stacks Up: I dug deep into the Jazz Butcher’s discography, which features 14 studio releases dating back to the mid-eighties. Of those I only liked two enough to buy and of those two “The Highest in the Land” comes in a very close second. Which is last if you are only looking at my collection, but second best if you compare against the entire discography. Perspective is everything.
Rating: 4 stars
Pat Fish is the coolest guy at every party. He’s not dressed flashy, and he’s not the most verbose. He’s the guy who hangs around the edges. Maybe sitting in a leather chair having a scotch in the parlour, maybe out on the deck smoking a cigarette. Always with a natural constellation of revelers cycling through his orbit to hear what fascinating and insightful thing he might say next.
That’s how his music comes across, anyway. These tunes are not – thank goodness – jazz, but rather a chill indie folk-pop thing, unassuming and easy going. The musicians apply a light touch and let Fish’s mellifluous tones wander purposefully across the top of the mix, dispensing a steady stream of images and references, with an occasional piece of wisdom buried, nugget-like, within.
Like the album’s cover the music feels very cosmopolitan, referencing far off places like Ankara and the Amalfi Coast with the ease and familiarity of someone who has been there. These places are more backdrops of memory than centerpieces to the songs. One of the album’s charms is its disparate approach to scene and character, evoking emotion and story with an offhanded ease.
Fish was in his early sixties when he recorded the record and wears the folk influences of his youth on his sleeve. Most of the time this is a good thing, and I even enjoyed the way he threw Dylan’s line “I married Isis on the fifth day in May” in the middle of “Never Give Up”, stealing Bob’s girl and then promptly losing her is a sea of disfunction.
Less enjoyable was the wholesale melody grab he does on “Running on Fumes,” the first verse of which is a near-perfect match to Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”. I wouldn’t have minded if the album jacket had an acknowledgement of the repurposing but it was not to be found. Rappers can nip samples without telling, Pat, but everyone else needs to footnote.
For all that, “Running on Fumes” is a great song – a lovely exploration of the quiet desperation we were all feeling across the globe in October of 2021 when it was recorded. Fish references the loss of “Lemmie, Bowie and Prince” and then goes for a deeper dive bemoaning the loss of Herman Hesse and Mackie Messer (aka Mack the Knife). I guess all that isolation can send your brain weird and archaic places if you let it.
The album is also self-referential, which is not surprising for an artist who had been at it for close to 40 years. On the album’s title track he mentions ‘Black Raoul’, who is the title character from a song off of 2012’s “Last of the Gentleman Adventurers”. That song references Mackie Messer and on “Highest In the Land” Fish references “Mackie Messer” – the original German for the same character. These concentric circles of allusion feel very deliberate – little Easter eggs for the benefit of those who care to listen closely.
Pat Fish died in Fall of 2021 shortly before the release of this record, making it his last. While 63 is too young to depart the earth, I’m glad he left on a high note. The highest in the land, in fact.
Best tracks: Melanie Hargreaves’ Father’s Jaguar, Sea Madness, Never Give Up, Running on Fumes
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