Three Fish ~ Laced
(written: 6 April 2004)
I'm a girl. Shocking. I know. And when it comes to being a girl, you have to just accept that sometimes you WILL be a pitiful sap who melts over songs that are both pitiful AND sappy.
Most of the time though I'm a vengeful music snob, and it'll take a superior brand of music oooooooooorrrrrr a connection, even a vague one, to Eddie Vedder to win my stuck up heart.
Ha.
Sometimes these connections are just horrible and lame (Ben Harper). Other times you take a chance and are richly rewarded.
I was in first year uni and had opened up the dreaded student account at the bank. Ohhhhhhhh the temptation to spend up large with that overdraft. So one day I was perusing the fine selection of CDs at Tower Music and I saw a strangely appealing dirty blue cardboard CD cover. Hello? What are you, you saucy little minx!?
Three Fish's first album lay before me, taunting me with it's sexy album artwork and the unknown. Did I trust in Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament enough as a musician to give his cruddy band a chance?
No sir. No I did not.
But I kept checking it's status. Would I? Wouldn't I? You know, it's not like me to give a band a chance. But hey, EDDIE VEDDER PROBABLY OWNS THIS ALBUM!!!
Every time I checked it sat there, unloved. Was I the only person on EARTH who knew who this band was (shout out to the girl in Sounds Lambton Quay who thought they were called Free Fish... On ya)?! Probably not, but in THIS STORE AT THIS SECOND?! Yoink! So I bought it. I bought it one morning and took it home and I DEVOURED IT. Uh... figuratively. CDs are very hard to digest (just ask Finn!).
Now, the album itself has it's ups and downs. It has some bloody fucking incredible songs. It has some shitters. It has a poem told in three parts in a strong South African accent. And it has Laced. The song that has been referred to by both Dawn and myself as "the most beautiful song in the world".
Hey? Have you heard it? Are you NUTS? It's fucking gorgeous. And so so so easily taken as ... hehehhe... dirrrrty.
Like a sound he lay in the folds of her sweetness...
Well. How ELSE can you take that? Mmm. Pancakes.
But the saucy first line aside, it has the kind of soaring impact that makes you lie on your bed and cuddle your pillow and sigh dreamily because it makes you think of that special girl or guy.
Without trying to sound like a giant wanker (which we're all already aware that I am thank you very much), if I were to listen to Laced with my eyes closed and write down the very first thing that sprung to mind as a way to describe it, I'd say waterfall. It has a perfect flow, with light guitar and an organ-like rhythm (heh...but ugh... metaphorical madness!), Robbi's voice carefully giving every word the attention it deserves and then the drums kick in with the gently throbbing (ohh..) bass line. An urgent chorus and it takes you back a step... to another longing verse before a slow to medium build up, ejaculating carefully into a handy paper cup. Then it fades out like Joey Potter shimmying out of Dawson's window... No no. Really. A waterfall.
And it's the kind of song where it's the saddest moment in the WORLD when you hear it fade out. So you have to PRESS REPEAT! Oh how you have to press repeat... over and over and OVER again!
And I'm going to go do that right now...
LOVE!
I greater than three YOU!.