Citizen Fish: Millennia Madness

Citizen Fish: Millennia Madness

1995

Lookout Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. PC Musical Chairs  2. Next Big Thing  3. Can't Be Bothered   4. 2000 and One  5. Panic in the Supermarket  6. Can't Complain  7. Faster  8. Phone in Sick  9. Refugees Go West  10. Backlash  11. Friends  12. Skin


Remember last year when I was doing the Citizen Fish posts? Well, after that I had such a huge hankerin' for more CF, so I went to the used record store and found an old Cd of "Millennia Madness" which (along with "Flinch" and "Thirst") used to be my go-to album.  Good, conscientious ska/punk/rock that doesn't use its fiercely political stance as an excuse to skimp on a good tune.  One of those rare albums where the music blasting from the speakers and the lyric sheet are equally compelling...

I loved re-reading the anti-2000 screed inside (basically placing an unrealistic expectation on the promise of the then-impending year 2000, using it as a marketing tool to package "newness" when we still have a world full of old problems...)

That's something I kinda miss...Punk albums that include editorials in the inside cover...It tends to reinforce and enhance the album's overhanging feel of dread, anticipation and skepticism...If you've checked out the later Subhumans albums or any other Citizen Fish album, you won't be greatly surprised  by the sound...Really dry, clanky brand of  British, anarcho, stretched-shirt punk-ska...

A few of their best songs are here...For a band that's always excelled in impeccable opening tracks (Just think "TV Dinner," "Sink or Swim," "Feeding") "PC Musical Chairs"  is possibly the best of the best...Just a big, hooky, horn-drenched manifesto with so many memorable bits...The mournful trumpet solo, that nagging guitar hook that dances the jig from time to time, that "Anyone with a conscience.." breakdown...And then when it goes back into the final verse (but with the horns blazing this time) but it's ten times punchier than the time before...Those kind of details always blow me away...

"Phone in Sick" is so fucking amazing it made me want to call in sick to work before I even had a job...I had totally forgotten about the song, but on the day I re-bought the album I just so happened to call in sick to work... As I was driving home while listening to the album I felt a circuit complete...A final puzzle piece click into place..."Woke up with a job one dayyyy, didn't want to work no mooooooore..." Oh, man...So good...

Add in the nerve-wracking "Panic in the Supermarket" and the ultra-catchy "Can't Be Bothered" and you've got one of the best albums of the whole 90's ska-punk era...Even suggesting that it had something to do with that whole scene lessens its achievement...This album has a clenched fist quality that works well in any era...It just so happened to coincide with the commercial rise of a superficially similar scene and made the whole thing sound meaningless in comparison...Long swim the Fish...

Here's "Can't Be Bothered" by Citizen Fish..Enjoy...