After cleaning up and winning numerous awards from the U.K's Classic Rock Society in 2003, British progressive band Strangefish followed that by releasing their critically acclaimed debut CD, Full Scale later that same year. Now almost 2 ½ years in the making, the band has upped the ante considerably with their second full length called Fortune Telling. For this CD the band chose to go the concept route and write music around an overall theme rather than worrying about dealing with each song individually. The thoughts and story line behind Fortune Telling basically deals with how the media has seemingly forever had a fascination with both wealth and fame, but that only scratches the surface as the band also takes the opportunity to inject the story line with other subjects as well, such as how man deals with his ongoing search for happiness in today's world of materialism. If it all sounds a bit pretentious and perhaps just another excuse for some soap box preaching and musical wanking, well I'm happy to say that this is definitely not the case.

The bands sound is symbolic of the newer elements of progressive rock yet it retains more than a passing nod to some of the finest classic bands of the genre. At times Strangefish sound like a combination of Spock's Beard and Genesis, which is definitely the best of both worlds of progressive rock. Your ears will perk up at the fantastic keyboard passages by Paul O'Neil as his solo's bristle with Tony Banks like enthusiasm and skill. Likewise guitarist, Bob's (no last name?) fretwork at times can also have visions of Hackett era Genesis dancing around your eardrums, and yet he's able to fire off many of his own distinctly sounding melodic and restrained chops in his own style. The rhythm section of drummer Dave Whitaker and Julian Gregory hold down the bottom end with apparent ease and it should be noted that while Gregory's primary instrument is the bass, he contributes some fantastic violin work to Fortune Telling and does an absolutely brilliant job on the CD's closing cut "Lighthouse Jig". This all instrumental track is one of my personal favorites. Last but not certainly least is vocalist Steve Taylor; there's obviously a good reason why he's won 3 consecutive awards from the Classic Rock Society for Best Male Vocalist. His vocals are primarily in the mid range and he doesn't stray that far stylistically, but his voice is the perfect match for the music and I heard echoes of Morse and Fish in his overall delivery.

The overall sound and production on Fortune Telling is another area where the band excels, it's clean and crisp but never comes off sounding too slick. In fact there is an overall feeling of warmth in the sound as a whole and the CD has a bit of an analogue feel to it that I really connected to, but don't ask me why. The overall packaging and layout should also be commended as it appears the band spent a lot of time ensuring that their musical vision was matched visually as well; not to mention the fortune teller fish that was included was an absolute riot, all I can say is that it's tied in to the cover image. Strangefish should definitely be mentioned in the same breath with the best of the neo-progressive bands of today and fans of prog will eagerly want to add this one to their collections. The band has a true winner with Fortune Telling, tight musicianship; top notch songs and great overall graphics and design that make for one of the best complete packages of the year so far. Let's hope we see them over on this side of the pond very soon.
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When I bought this CD, I didn't really know that it was a Soft Machine spin-off. That fact might have been tucked away in my subconscious, but it was seeing the fairly cheap $9 price sticker on it at a prog festival vendor's table, and recognizing the band's name that made me decide to give it a try. If I had realized that Robert Wyatt was the main vocalist, I might have skipped the disc since I'm not very fond of his voice. Fortunately the album is largely instrumental, and what vocals there are don't really bother me much.

The album kicks off in a fairly experimental mode, with "Starting in the Middle of the Day We Can Drink Our Politics Away". The song consists entirely of the title sung over a repeated piano riff. Each syllable of the lyrics is held for so long that it takes the song's entire two and a half minute length to sing the title once and then again about half way through before the track abruptly ends. Oddly amusing.

The next four tracks all segue, creating what seems to be one long piece of music. The eight minute "Marchides" starts out as a blistering jam that wouldn't sound out of place on a Soft Machine album. It has a distorted keyboard (or is that guitar?) solo in the middle that gives way to a quieter and more composed sounding closing section that could still pass for Soft Machine. The album then shifts seamlessly into "Nan True's Hole", which produced an odd feeling of deja vu the first time I heard it — it turned out to be because The Muffins had snuck an instrumental cover version of it into their ProgDay set a year or two earlier. The main riff of the song is memorable enough that it stuck with me. This track in turn shifts into "Righteous Rhumba"; I wouldn't have noticed that it was even a new track if the lyrics hadn't suddenly started saying something about the Chinese. And finally the album side is rounded out by "Brandy as in Benj", a four minute piece with some catchy guitar riffing and lots of electric piano soloing. Very Canterbury sounding.

"Gloria Gloom" starts side two off with some very slow building, very spacey synthesizer experimentation from Eno. After a few minutes that gives way to a section where the balance of volume fades back and forth between a Wyatt-sung song and what sounds like three conversations going on at the same time. The overall effect is like listening to an annoying bootleg where the audience chatter often overtakes the band that everyone came to see but nobody's listening to. Finally for the last couple minutes, the song shifts back to Eno's spacey synth noodling.

"God Song" is a ballad sung by Wyatt over acoustic guitar and bass. The lyrics seem to be some sort of sarcastic advice to God, which normally I'd probably find amusing but I just can't concentrate on them because Wyatt's voice really rubs me the wrong way. "Flora Fidgit" returns to instrumental music that sounds more than a bit like Soft Machine. After a few minutes it goes annoyingly out of tune and then gets overlapped by the beginning of "Smoke Signal", another jazzy jam in the Canterbury style.

Overall, there's enough good music on this disc to make me glad that I bought it. But it's not one that I've gotten the urge to listen to a lot since I picked it up, and I doubt it's ever going to become a favorite.
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