The 3D's - Fish Tales

The opening track "First Church" helps to clarify exactly how the 3Ds got tagged as the New Zealand Pixies from the start, with a similar sense of punk aggression, squealed vocals, and barely-controlled insanity. There was always something just a little off about the band as a result, making the foursome all the more fun to listen to. A definite difference from the Pixies is that Denise Roughan was as much the lead singer as David Mitchell at the point of this album; her wistful vocals on the wonderful "Dreams of Herge," inspired by the creator of the legendary comic character Tintin, makes that song one of the EP's clear highlights. Songtitles like "Evocation of W. C. Fields" and "The Ball of Purple Cotton" (the latter a hazy, gentle float of noise backing Roughan's recount of a strange dream) help indicate the somewhat skewed worldview at play, making Fish Tails, on the whole, a fun blast of off-kilter rock noise for the adventuresome listener who still likes a bit of relative straighforwardness in the middle of it all.

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You can thank Jay Beck for this one!