Released just after the death of
Pat Fish,
the Jazz Butcher's guiding light,
The Highest in the Land is a fitting epitaph to a career spent balancing gentle sophistication and raucous humor while delivering some of the oddest, most affecting pop music of the post-punk and indie pop era. Written over a span of many years and recorded with a small band featuring long-time cohort
Max Eider on guitar, the record is a relaxed affair musically, relying on the sparse sound of a small band playing, never working up much of a lather while jangling quietly and leaving plenty of space for
Fish's undiminished vocals and mordant wit. His focus is split between railing against Brexit and the isolation from the rest of the world it entailed, and his own mortality. It's clear from his lyrical position that the bout with cancer he fought -- and seemed to have won before he suddenly passed -- affected him deeply. The laid-back blues ramble "Time" looks back at his life with an unvarnished eye and laments presciently that "the time's running out." Other tracks take a similar unflinching lyrical approach, but in a more nuanced way musically. The achingly sad "Never Give Up" proudly takes its place in the pantheon of
the Jazz Butcher's finest ballads, an aspect of their career that was often overlooked in favor of their peppy material. This song, the lilting "Sea Madness," and the incredibly moving "Goodnight Sweetheart" give lie to any notion that the band were some kind of frivolous endeavor.
Fish was able to rip the listener's heart out, beat it up a bit, and reinsert it with a devilish grin, and the songs here that do it are the best of the batch. On the flip side of all that pain are the perkier tracks like "Melanie Hargreaves' Father's Jaguar" and "Running on Fumes," both jaunty examples of
Fish's ability to take seemingly simple and fun music, give it a dark or pointed twist, and make it a
Jazz Butcher track through and through. This dual-pronged attack of laughs and tears is something he spent a long time delivering in his one-of-kind way, and it's nice that he was able to release one more excellent album before departing.
The Highest in the Land may not be the strongest
Jazz Butcher release, but it certainly has enough frothy treats and swooning bits of heartbreak to remind everyone why they -- and
Fish -- were so delightful. ~ Tim Sendra