Arnold Fish is a pop multi-instrumentalist. He creates songs by neatly mixing the sounds of the mellotron, fuzzy guitars, and electric organs into a psychedelically seasoned soup with his love of the groovy soundtrack of the late sixties and early seventies being never less than obvious. Probably needless to say by this point, he is also French.
So what will you find within the spiraling grooves of his album “In the Land of the Elephant Blues”? You get splashes of John Barry, Tony Hatch and of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis as sonic garnish. You get lava lamp lit recollections of the glories of west coast psych pop swirling self-consciously in front of your very ears. You also get, and you might not be expecting this, is a solid foundation underpinning all his songs that suggests a reverence towards the power to the people song creation skills of, say, seventies songsmiths Chinn and Chapman.
Regarding the songs, the title track pretty much sums up the man’s influences but there is still much joy to be found in the sonic larceny that is “Lady Harrington” and, rolling back the years as it were, in “Santa Monica”. It has to be noted that melody is clearly no stranger to our Mr. Fish and, despite his reverential resurrection of the glories of the past, the songs are not mere pastiches or parodies but genuine recreations of a sound so often confused with a fashion statement.
Worthy of investigation then? If you like proper pop songs that remind you of better times then cast your rod in the direction of Arnold Fish.
The album. as a download or on vinyl, is available from Bandcamp.