Fish Food is the project of Joseph K. Sims from London, Ontario. His latest release, For Shadow Hurts, is a collection of weird lo-fi bedroom pop, equal parts sweet, smooth, spiky and strange, as distinct as the great cover artwork by Luke Van Heerwaarden (what are those? bubblegum seals?).
The album kicks off with ‘Candy’, a lazy shambling and sweet track with odd lyrics about gum and sticky candy (“and there is candy waiting underneath your shoe / and if it waits long enough it’ll stick like super glue”), while ‘Cruel’ is about the dangerously thin line between being cool and being cruel. ‘No Fun Party’ seems somehow strained and edgy, like it might burst into noise at any moment, although it never does except for some braying distorted guitar. The lyrics are again obtuse and seem to deal with that awkward feeling of boring someone with your conversation at a party.
“looks like
i’m taking your mind for a ride
all the time
conversation
drawn and hung and quartered
dont look so bored”
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‘Bad Mouth’ is bright and sashaying dream pop with sort of sad vocals, “i don’t try, i just sit back / it doesn’t matter, smiles crack”, before the twangy acoustics and high stretching vocals of ‘Suzy Roam’. Closer ‘Slacker’ is as the title suggests but spangled with shimmery dream pop sparkles, lo-fi drum machine booms and Sims’ idiosyncratic vocals:
“Catch me slacking on the job
i took the night off
we could just stay in
catch me feeling soft”
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You also get a bonus track, ‘FSH’, with the download which takes a while to get ready and comes complete with a tropical drum machine and pulsing synths, the vocals high-pitched and subdued. Grab For Shadow Hurts via the Fish Food Bandcamp page.