**** Fish -- Raingods with Zippos
Well, the big guy certainly took his time with the follow up to Sunsets on Empire but, for the most part it was worth the wait. The album is split into two parts -- the first contains songs that stand on their own, while "side two" (in the old parlance) is a suite called "Plague of Ghosts." Considering the first part, there's a cracking good cover of Alex Harvey's "Faithhealer", a fairly nice song in "Tumbledown" (featuring the return of Mickey Simmonds) and a kind of fun southern-boogie like rocker called "Mission Statement." The remainder are less interesting tracks. "Plague of Ghosts," on the other hand, is a fantastic collection of tunes written with Mark Daghorn and Tony Turrell of The Positive Light. Epic and sweeping, this is one of the best combinations of songs Fish has collated in many a year. I slightly prefer the live version on 2000s Candlelight in the Fog, but the differences are minor.
Reviews by A. D. Jensen
