Released: April 23, 1996
After Dig, I Mother Earth, had to figure out how to sharpen its songwriting without giving up the long grooves, Latin percussion, hard-rock riffs, and psychedelic detours that set the band apart. That puts a question at the centre of Scenery and Fish: can the writing become more melodic while the musicians still have room to move?
Jagori Tanna used a simple test for the new material. If he could strum a song on acoustic guitar and it held his attention, he brought it to the band. The change is easy to hear, but the arrangements remain busy. “Hello Dave!” spends less than a minute establishing the percussion before “Like a Girl” drops into a tightly locked guitar pattern. The chorus points toward Rush, Christian Tanna answers with Neil Peart-style drum movement, and Alex Lifeson adds guitar. The hook stays clear even with all that activity underneath it.
“One More Astronaut” shows how well that approach works. Bruce Gordon’s bass keeps moving around Jagori’s guitar while Christian changes the accents and breaks up the pulse. Edwin pulls Christian’s space imagery together. Tired eyes, cold and weightlessness could disappear into abstraction, but his phrasing gives each image direction. He keeps the early lines contained, then stretches “headspace” as the arrangement opens behind him.
“Another Sunday” pushes closer to pop. The chorus returns quickly, Edwin uses a broad melody, and Jagori works smaller guitar parts through the verses instead of filling every opening. The song is direct by I Mother Earth standards, though the rhythm section never settles for a basic straight-ahead pattern.
The middle of the album still wanders. “Three Days Old” moves between hazy passages and abrupt guitar interruptions. “Used to Be Alright” builds an uptempo funk groove from drums, bass, and added percussion, with Jagori’s guitar cutting across the rhythm. Luis Conte and Daniel Mansilla form a second rhythmic layer around Christian’s kit. Paul Northfield and Jagori’s production keeps everything separated enough to follow: kick, bass, hand percussion, and guitar retain their own space even when they are moving together.
“Shortcut to Moncton” runs nearly eight minutes and opens into a jam where Gordon plays bass chords against a drone on the G string. His bass becomes part of the atmosphere while still holding the section together. He takes a sparer approach at the beginning of “Earth, Sky & C.,” using only a few notes before moving into the slap section and the larger percussion jam. Jagori’s lead playing openly draws from Carlos Santana’s style. The “C” stands for Carlos, and the lyrics end with a Spanish dedication to him.
Those longer pieces explain why the melodic shift matters. A riff, chorus, or vocal line now gives the band somewhere to return after an extended instrumental section. Northfield’s mix makes those routes easy to follow, but the real change happened in the writing. The jams grow out of songs that have already established their shape.
So, can I Mother Earth, become more melodic without losing what made the band unusual? Yes. Scenery and Fish gives every song a recognizable centre, then lets the musicians complicate it from within. “Like a Girl” can nod to Rush, “Shortcut to Moncton” can spend time on a droning bass figure, and “Earth, Sky & C.” can end in a Santana-inspired jam because each song has already shown where it is going. The tighter writing is exactly what gives the band room to explore.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia.
Artist information and music courtesy of the band.
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