I MOTHER EARTH – Scenery and Fish (1996 EMI)
Some albums that mean everything to some, can mean nothing to others. Take a look at Scenery and Fish.
I Mother Earth’s second album gets a slew of 4 and 5 star ratings on the Canadian Amazon. Yet I don’t get it and never have. I was on the I Mother Earth train very early, before their first album came out. I loved the modern heaviness of the band. With the tribal and funk influences seeping through, I Mother Earth put out a seriously impressive debut album: a Canadian classic. As any band should, they mixed it up a bit on the second album.
In early 1996 I received a promo CD for the first single from the second album, “One More Astronaut”, with the album version and a 4:35 edit. It didn’t seem too different, maybe just a bit more concise than some of the first album’s longer jams. This isn’t indicative of the album in general, which is a wild ride of different styles.
The exotic percussion (by Luis Conte and Daniel Mansilla) is still intact, melded with the funk bass, but the overall sound is very different. Paul Northfield’s production is cleaner and slicker than Mike Clink’s on the first LP. He still enables to band to exercise their instruments unfettered, but perhaps with a more radio friendly backing.
Although I’ve tried over and over again through the past two decades to let Scenery and Fish “click”, it just won’t. Other fans certainly have their favourite tracks: “Like a Girl”, “Raspberry”, “Used to be Alright”, “Another Sunday”. These are indeed some of the best tracks on the album, yet I struggled to remember how they go. “Another Sunday”, for example has an incredible blast of hooks for a chorus, but no memorable verses. Maybe this album is too thick with musical ideas and passages for the average mortal.
But that’s just me. You might think I’m nuts. There are those who think I Mother Earth can do no wrong, but fans in general love Scenery and Fish, while I simply don’t get it. I’ll always enjoy “One More Astronaut” and “Like a Girl”, which by the way features a friend of theirs named Alex from some band called Rush.
2/5 stars
mikeladano.com 
I’m familiar with the name, but I don’t think I’ve ever listened to them before this video.
Not bad, but I don’t think I’ll be running out to buy it.
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Don’t rush to assume….see comment below from Patrick Olson.
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Lol
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Definitely a band that I would probably have liked had I heard them at the time. Not sure about what I hear and read here, right enough.
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See Patrick’s comment for better perspective.
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Never heard of em. Its weird how much Canadian stuff is under-represented in the UK.
I never heard of Geord Downie or whoever until all you guys wrote about him.
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Gord Downie, yeah. He’s probably the most important rock star in Canadian history, now. He’s not the first to write about such topics as Canadian painters, hockey players, or writers. But he made these things popular. If kids today know who Hugh McLellan or the Group of Seven are, I think they have Gord to thank.
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I have their 1st album. I recall liking it. Never seen this one in the stores.
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Well if you take Patrick’s advice, he says it’s essential.
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I can picture myself seeing the video for another sunday on the much music countdown and thinking, i really like this song.
ANd I still do!
I think my score would be somewhere between your 2/5 and 6/5!
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Whereas Dig and Scenery & Fish were the quintessential albums of my teenage years back in the 90s.
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I love Dig! I would like to see them reissue it with the B-sides and anything else they could dig up from the era. They had a demo tape they could plunder.
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