Lungfish - Love is Love

2003; 10 tracks

lungfish is a band whose extensive (very appropriately so) array of releases never ceases to mystify me. love is love is the band's second to last album, and one of the most assuredly consistent of them all. tracks like "fearfully and wonderfully," which is tied only with "wailing like dragons" as my favorite piece of lungfish godliness, opens with the most glowing of chords that unfailingly lift my spirits up high. this album holds a luminescence not matched by many other albums. here are a few lyrics that i simply adore, especially when sung by daniel higgs:

holy holy christ beast
christ beast bear your message
about a godform that’s formless
and forming in your baby, in your mind
with wings like rainbow oars of fire
inscribing signs across the water
gently, gently upon the water
signs becoming what they signify

i'm reading john irving's the world according to garp right now, and have been listening to love is love along the way. one sentence in the absurdly enjoyable novel that truly arrested me was this: "garp's throat ached at her trust, and at his love for her." i know exactly how that feels, for my throat to just swell up and feel overflowed with tears, or some indiscernable substance that is only associated with the most painful of emotions. that is how this album makes me feel - overwhelmed with pity, with grief, and.... maybe even with love.

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Lungfish Live + 10 East 7"

Lungfish is a progressive/post-hardcore band from Baltimore, Maryland, fronted by the infamous Daniel Higgs and equipped with such outstanding musicians as Asa Osbourne, Sean Meadows, and Mitchell Feldstein. Their discography is fairly vast, each album changing in color slightly, building and building until the bitter end of their legacy...

Thank you to tsintskaro for these.

10 East 7"

1995; 3 tracks

A highly meditative release... The track "Go Simple" makes my life a litle better. It is a gem among Lungfish records.

To scrape the chattering lungs
Away from my skin
The beast and all it's hornets
Collapse in the popping air


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Lungfish, Live at Upstairs at Nick's, Philadelphia, March 1998


1998; 13 tracks

This is a nice set, well recorded, of many tracks off of Artificial Horizons (along with some others).

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Lungfish, Live at Brownies, NY, 11.12.99

1999; 14 tracks

This is a REALLY fun and amazing set. I wish I could have been there.

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Lungfish - Artificial Horizon

1998; 11 tracks

Lungfish presents another chapter in the thinking man's modern rock. On this album, Lungfish continues a pattern of isolating crypto-philosophical songs with minimalist free-rock instrumentals. The resultant mood is somber and cathartic, focused and pointed, intellectual and freeing. Lungfish suggests simplicity as a gateway to melody, and poetry as a vehicle for intelligent observation. Single-mindedly, Lungfish combats obsession ("If love is all you hope to find / Love will ruin your mind") and chaotically they call for greater control ("Bridges crossing, bridges crossing land / Subterranean rivers seeping through the sand: Oppress yourself") over a deconstructed and unornamented rock groove. In essence, this is most likely my favorite Lungfish album aside from Feral Hymns :')

Push and pull, open and close
Ears and mouth and eyes and nose
Big and small, short and tall
Light and dark, rise and fall
(Tick Tock, Tick Tock)

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Lungfish - Sound in Time

1996; 10 tracks



Although each Lungfish album speaks volumes of dark, powerful poetry on its own, this very album, Sound in Time, their fifth, might be the most diverse and enjoyable album I've yet heard. It is an extension of the sounds heard on their earlier albums, but it also seems like a transition into the deeper waters of their discography... i.e. Indivisible, Necrophones, and Love is Love. I wish there was more I could say.



"Solid State" is such an epic track. I am using that word correctly and appropriately.



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Lungfish - Indivisible

1997; 11 tracks

"Eleven tracks are present on Indivisible, and five of them are instrumentals. In artwork and mood, this is very much Lungfish's 'black' album. An emotional release is frozen in the active grieving anger that is Indivisible. Sonic Youth-like, distorted but trebly guitar sounds united with a rock-and-brooding rhythm section. Lungfish's art-rock catharsis is marked by dissonance or simplicity for a melody and sparseness or heavy hurtling from drums and warm bass." - Insound

This album is indeed brooding. Someone once told me that, in the case of Lungfish, Feral Hymns was the only album I'd ever have to listen to and I'd be set. I love love love that album, but I only recently realized how foolish it was for me to not try any other albums. I've been listening to this album for the past few days and can say it is quickly becoming almost level with Feral Hymns. I included that description (^) in order to describe the sound, for it is very true, but there is something even -more- to Indivisible. It is very brooding and dark, rhythmic though not unmelodic, slow and plodding at times, and even at the faster parts it is never more than walking-pace. These 11 tracks are highly meditative, as I have come to realize is quite common in all of Lungfish. They are energetic but at the same time laid-back. Repetitive but never old, it is custom for them to play one riff throughout the duration of a track. There is something liberating about this technique of Lungfish's that is unprecedented in the world of indie rock (or whatever you'd like to call this). This album was fantastic and I am never again going to listen to one album from a band and assume the rest isn't as good... and even if it's true, why not try >.>

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