Phatfish Review - The Duchess, 2/12

Their latest album, Higher, certainly builds on the recent progression towards developing each sound completely, adding synthesisers to full effect and taking more modern styles from the secular music world. Each song is still unique in style, ensuring that almost everyone will find at least a couple of tracks that they like on any recent Phatfish album.

How did this translate to a live show?

To long-time followers of Phatfish it won’t come as a shock that their live gig was as crisp and well-performed as a CD track: the above video was a recording from their Bournemouth that sounds exactly like both their album and their York gig. With Lou’s powerful lyrics and synthesisers lifting the treble and a driving bass from both guitars and drums, the sound is complete and impeccable. Dramatic in delivery, the band’s continual use of build-ups, silence and sudden starts, along with a great lighting rig, makes their live events as good as any non-Christian band.

The eclectic mix of a range of songs and sounds from across their various albums were certainly crowd pleasing, and even for a venue as traditionally diverse as the Duchess, Phatfish represent a new direction of entertaining band and I would love to see more of the same from them.

With music spanning more than a decade, the trouble for the band is now finding a fresh, yet lasting approach to their sets. Some of Phatfish’s songs, such as ‘Heavenbound’, are still played in a large number of their gigs and other songs, such as ‘Awake Awake Oh Zion’, are played across the country by bands every week; will any of these songs endure?

Certainly, numbers ‘Faith Is Rising’ and ‘Wait’ could be played at services across the country, and songs such as ‘Higher’ and ‘Come On My Boy’ are likely to be played at future gigs – but Phatfish have probably made a mistake in publicising the two latter tracks, for their content is not necessarily the material for a church setting. Outside of churches with a high Phatfish fanbase (such as mine), I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see any of these reach the popularity of ‘There Is A Day’.

However, for the crowd pleasing elements at Duchess, the material displayed the band’s unique ability to bring religion to the mainstream. Their craft is such that they make relevant to a contemporary audience what was once believed to be a genre exclusively heard in places of worship, and their set clearly showed the warm welcome such music can, and should, receive.

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