Personnel: Sarah Fimm, Peter Geraghty, Jim Perry, Mac Ritchey

1. Be Like Water
2. Wrong Side Up
3. Virus
4. SETI
5. Alien Boys
6. Smoke
7. David Johnson
8. Spit Trap Ghetto
9. Lioness
10. In the Red
11. A Perfect Dream
12. Shadows and Dust
13. Salvia Path

http://www.sarahfimm.com

The first time I heard the word 'fuck' in a pop song was The
Pretenders eponymous debut, where Chrissie Hynde utters *that word*
in a her slick, too-cool to care vibrato. She imbued 'fuck' with
magic power. Subsequently, the word has lost some of its power in
pop music. Hynde was quoted once, saying something to the effect
that you'd be hard-pressed *not* to find to find a pop artist that
uses it. It's an easy way to gain an edge.
Sarah Fimm, a New York-based artist (band?) *loves* the word fuck.
It is sprinkled liberally throughout her songs, and in the samples
that she uses. Her utterances don't have the power of Hynde's
groundbreaking use of the word. However, it's an honest use of the
word, and contextually makes sense. She has found "the tao of
Fuck." True, there's a bit of shock value: Ms. Fimm has a beautiful
voice that reminds one of Sarah McLachlan, one that belies her dark
imagination, and her pottymouth. Her lyrics are fanciful, barbed
confessionals, in which no stone--rage, humor, pain, and sex--is
unturned.
One of the predominate themes on this album is of self-loathing. The
narrator(s) of "Smoke", "Be Like Water" and "Virus" are introspective
misfits, "holding the charred remains of the last dirty joke." They
are uncomfortable in the world at large, as well as uncomfortable in
their own skin. The song-cycle forms a wonderful exploration of
female rage, not unlike of the work of Kristen Hersh (Throwing
Muses). The frank sexuality of Hynde is evoked in the
whispered "Lioness"is predatory; you can see her licking her jowls
of the blood, after purring in the sunlit veldt. All of her songs
are drenched in a stream-of-conciousness poetry, full of pulp horror
imagery, crude jokes, slang, and sly references to mythology.
Imagine Kate Bush hanging out in Soho with Patti Smith, you might get
the idea.
Fimm's compositions are piano-based, with forays into spacy ambient,
dubby triphop, and an occasionally nod to the swampy alternarock of
Smashing Pumpkins. The triphop band Ruby is a good reference point.
My favorite song, "Spit Trap Ghetto," is loungey hot jazz; in it, she
catalogs the eccentricities of a bunch of beautiful losers as saxes
wail and Monster-Mash rhythm plays. Beauty and the beast live side by
side in these songs; in Fimm's world, Beauty's gown is tattered, and
the Beast is a wimp.

--Craig L. Gidney