By Mark
Jenkins
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 14, 1996
The biggest fish on "Three Fish" (Epic) is Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, but the star is singer-guitarist Robbi Robb, whose full-time band is Tribe After Tribe. Joined by Pilot drummer Richard Stuverud and occasional guests, Robb and Ament make neo-psychedelic mood music derived (according to Ament) from Sufi mysticism, the Grateful Dead and poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Rather than Pearl Jam's neo-metal, the Fish offer spooky, mid-tempo compositions with such titles as "Song for a Dead Girl" and "Zagreb."
If not as direct as Pearl Jam's, the Fish's music is not hopelessly arcane. The band, which appears tonight at the 9:30 club, makes sitar riffs and Hindu/Islamic chanting surprisingly accessible. The three cosmic parables derived from a poem by 13th-century Sufi poet Rumi -- "The Intelligent Fish," "The Half Intelligent Fish" and "The Stupid Fish" -- are a bit distracting, but otherwise the album nicely sustains its questing mood and exotic sound.
"Fish" is not exactly grunge, but the band doesn't lose track of what it knows how to do well. Thus "All Messed Up" mixes a Krishna chant with thumping hard rock; its opening sitar riff is quickly answered by a distorted electric guitar. That's the most outgoing song, but slower tracks such as "Strangers in My Bed" and "A Lovely Meander" have a similar appeal. The album may not serve as an adequate introduction to Eastern mysticism, but as rock music it's more than satisfactory.
