Scenic >> Get in the boat

Scenic - "All Fish Go To Heaven"
(World Domination Recordings / Independent Project Records, 1996)

I was lucky enough to buy Scenic's sophomore CD Acquatica in late '96, thanks to reading a glowing review in Rolling Stone, by David Fricke, I believe.  That was a really key summer & fall for me, because I also got stuff like Loveless (My Bloody Valentine), Cheer Up (Plexi), Confusion Is Sex (SY), Isn't Anything (MBV), Nassau (The Sea And Cake), Blue Bell Knoll (Cocteau Twins), Hi Fi Way (You Am I), Bakesale (Sebadoh), Scum (Napalm Death), Psycho Candy (JAMC), some Modest Mouse (I know... but they were actually good then), etc.  Scenic evolved out of the L.A.-based tribal post-punk crew Savage Republic.  I guess the short story is that a couple of the members moved to Arizona, ditched the vocals, and concentrated on evocative, wordless soundscapes befitting the vastness of their desert locale.  (Someone should send a copy to Muammar Gaddafi to see if he agrees; I read that dude brings around a huge tent in which he holds all of his speaking engagements worldwide, so that he will appear truer to his region's Bedouin class, which is misleading because he never belonged to it.  I did a report on Bedouins in 6th grade, which was my first real exposure to Arab culture, and now I'm kind of obsessed with it.)  The album is filled with mysterious ebbs and flows, and a tasteful, nuanced instrumental prowess.  The animated flute on this song is what really gets me right in my soul, and as an aspiring marine biologist, the title immediately grabbed me.  The whole album is an understated tour de force, though maybe too ambient and minimalist over long stretches, so it might not please today's "post-rockers," who tend to demand a lot of aggression and/or metal influence in their "post-rock."  Well, a flute is made out of /MetaL\, bro, and having a flute in your band shows that you have more cujones than the latest Mogwai or Isis clone*.  Anyway, Acquatica was one of the flagship releases in the post-rock invasion when it came out, in my opinion is still at or near the top of that heap to this day.  By the way, Scenic's first album, Incident At Cima, is kinda boring.


*Yes, I know Mogwai had some flute on their first album, when they were still relevant for about 5 minutes.  Bardo Pond has also used lots of flute, played by their singer Isobel, and of course there's Yusef Lateef.  So flutes can be cool.


Some press quotes from the sticker on my promo CD (I also have the regular CD) for Acquatica:

"A vivid mind-photo of the Mojave Desert in all its sun-baked wonder, rendered with peyote-dream guitars and sparse, elegant percussion." - Rolling Stone

"If Nick Cave had spent his childhood in the Southwest, this is the kind of music he might've made - a sweeping, swirling, somewhat Stereolab-ish drone that's full of both darkness and wonder." - huH

Update, Aug. 2011: Here is a show flyer and a ticket that may shed light on the origin of the phrase "All Fish Go To Heaven."  It was apparently the name of a series of annual festivals in Arizona of bands in AZ's "Beautiful Noise" scene, which I guess was a take-off of the shoegaze bands that was known as "The Scene That Celebrates Itself" in the early '90s.

Flyer

Ticket

Planets with similar climates: Dif Juz - "No Motion" (~1982), Juned - "Sisters Of The Red Sun" (1995), 7% Solution - "Your Kingdom, Your World" (1996), Tortoise - "TNT" (1998),  Southpacific - "E10 @ 182" (1999).

I don't like fishing, which makes me an anomaly here in south Louisiana, where you pretty much just have to take a boat out on any body of water and then duck as fish try to jump into it, some of them even bringing their own charbroil seasoning along, as though they are happy to fulfill their one duty in life at any expense.  I took down my mini 10-gallon reef aquarium a few months ago, which means that for the first time since about 1986, I'm aquariumless.  Well, I was for about a year after Katrina, which killed my 90-gal. reef tank, but not by choice.  I now think that keeping living things in a little enclosure for my own amusement is not all that nice, though they are kept free of predation, so it's a pretty good tradeoff for them.