My Top 1000 Songs #860: Baby Fish Mouth

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

When I picked up His Name Is Alive's 1993 LP Mouth By Mouth, I was living in an old, drafty Victorian in San Francisco's Noe Valley. Something about the record's blend of Cocteau Twins-inspired goth ambience and a weird amalgam of more alt.rock-friendly pop and Big Star's Third-like melancholy (including a nifty cover of that record's "Blue Moon") and home-studio experimentation seemed to suit the place; I could throw it on after a long day of work and it made the house feel haunted and a little bit creepy.

I haven't revisited the record very often in the decades since, but opening track "Baby Fish Mouth" (a title presumably based on a throwaway line in When Harry Met Sally?) still brings back that slightly disorienting vibe. There's a pretty melody underlying the track, broken up by more abrasive sonics and some chilling harmonies, falling somewhere between affectionately intimate and maybe just a little bit frightening.

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