Fishmans – 1999
★★★★★
The way I would like to imagine the afterlife is as a sort of rogue-like. You’d go out, live through a concert you missed in the past or future, return to your home, and put away whatever you brought home. Tomorrow brings the same, only a different show. So on and so forth. You’re not treated any different, you’re there like everyone else was that night. Night by night, your collection grows. Shirts, posters, records, and other trinkets fill the space. Your home expands, it makes room.
There’s plenty of artists I’d want to see, many no longer possible (the band ‘Death’ comes to mind). Lots of specific shows as well. Alive 2007, 808s & Heartbreak at Hollywood Bowl, The Long Goodbye, Phoebe Bridgers at MSG this year, it goes on. Maybe just a show I was going to go to, but missed for whatever reason. Maybe I’d relive a show I did go to.
It isn’t a controversial take to call this your favorite live album of all time. Nobody would bat an eye. It’s probably mine too. I won’t act as some pseudo-intellectual reminding you, ‘Hey, it’s not just LONG SEASON on here!’ because we all know that. I love this album to death far beyond its closer, especially ‘Oh Slime,’ ‘IN THE AIR,’ and track three. Part of the beauty of a live release is that the artist gets to choose what gets in much more freely, not constricted by a label suggestion or obligation. And often times, it elevates the music even further as the artist can display proficiency in another form of art, being their performances. This is one of the greatest examples of that happening. Across the entire first disc of this album, we relive the smooth dreaminess of Fishmans, the setlist spanning multiple prior works. It’s so easy to fall in love with the band all over again with every listen, as they truly never lost their spark all the way through their final performance. I won’t beat around the bush anymore though, I want to talk about LONG SEASON.
Fishmans would still be incredibly acclaimed without this song’s existence. LONG SEASON in its studio form is already a beloved classic. However, with only a couple extra minutes of runtime, they make something that shows the studio version up in almost every regard. It’s quite simple at face value, starting as only a few chords and adding more and more cogs to the machine as the song goes on (much like Stop Making Sense). This carries on until about the thirty minute mark, where Fishmans reel back and start new again. The initial simplicity and repetition return, but new instruments join. A persistent violin carries the last leg through. Slow guitar strings trail it. The guitar develops. The guitar peters out. The violin persists. In it’s final minutes, LONG SEASON bursts forth with one last breath of life, and the guitar returns in long drags. Of course, the keys are still there, acting as the foundation for the repetition that the song thrives on. More elements return from before, the shrieking keys, which I can only imagine as rising beams of light, make a faint return in the background, an accordion joins the fray, and the violin changes its tune. At last, Shinji Sato sings one last time, though that sentence would end up meaning something different only a couple months later.
It’s frustrating knowing the world lost Sato so early, even more so in knowing that he wasn’t yet done with music, he still had more to say, more to give. But it also adds an extra potency. Everything hits a little harder and cuts a little deeper. It feels even more bittersweet than it already did. And to some degree, there’s an extra beauty in that.
Favorite Track(s): Oh Slime, なんてったの, ゆらめき IN THE AIR, LONG SEASON
Written by Michéal Doran
Leave a comment