Customer Reviews

Suits

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It took me quite a long time to purchase this CD due to some bad reviews I saw posted in the Amazon.com site, but as a big Marillion fan (Fish era), I had to have it. I got it expecting the worst, but I was happily surprised with its many qualities rather than its faulty moments. The production is excellent, far superior than Fish's earlier releases. The four first songs are great, and they are worth the price of the CD alone (Lady Let It Lie being one of his great songs of all time, a must in any Best Of CD). The record does not quite maintain its great moments afeter that, but still the songs are good. The problem seems to be that Fish wanted to do something different thean the traditional 'progressive sound' one should expect from his work. If the next four songs were shorter, then it'd be another story, because they are quite good. Different from his previous work indeed, but still very good. They're only too long for their own good. In my humble opinion the only real weak tracks are Pipeline and Raw Meat, but only because this scotsmans whining against his former recording companies may be justified, but did not turned out good lyrics or melodies. Don't get me wrong, they are listenable and not really bad, but quite not in the same league as the rest of his output since he left Marillion (the same thing happend in "Internal Exile". Tongues is the weakest song in that algum and dwells about the same subject).

All in all this is not Fish's best album to date, but still is quite good when compared to all his solo works. I still think it is his most underrated CD and did not deserve the criticism it got. I listen to it very often and my opinion didn't change after many atempts to find something to justify those who did not like it.

I was under the wrong impression that this cd was one of Fish "not so good" works. Maybe because it was a "hard to find" cd badly promoted and also one mentioned in not so good terms by the artist himself. I got this cd just one week ago when i saw it alone at a cd store and decided to buy it. And what a surprise!! it is an excelent cd equal to all the other works an artist of this caliber can record. It is maybe his more personal work and simply is a marvelous colection of songs and very well produced.

Though Fish has continued to release good new music after leaving Marillion, it's always felt to me like there has been something lacking. Whatever that quality was, I think he found it for this album. The production quality of "Suits" shows a vast improvement over Fish's previous efforts. The sound is so much fuller and richer throughout the whole album. The lyrics are some of the best he's written in a while, and the music has a more intricate quality.

The first song, "Mr. 1470" (not Mr. 147, as the track listing reads), sets the mood of the whole album. In the liner notes, Fish explains that as he was looking at an exhibit of 1470 Man in a museum, it occurred to him that he could be looking at a long-lost ancestor. He shares his musings on how humanity got to where it is today. "We learned to love, we learned to kill/ We taught ourselves to rule the world." In "Fortunes of War" he contrasts children playing at war with the brief sad image of a disabled vet still living with the reality. Probably the weakest song on the album is "Raw Meat," the requisite Fish ballad that closed the original album, before the bonus tracks were added. The bonus tracks are good, too. "Out of My Life" is a sort of short folksy jig about attempting to exorcise the lingering feelings after an ended relationship, and "Black Canal" is a spooky tale of an encounter with a stranger.

With this album, Fish seems to have arrived at a sound he'd been looking for in his two previous efforts. It remains a favorite in my collection.

Fish's albums have always been kind of hit and miss, and this album is famed as being one of his biggest misses. I owned and eventually sold this album long ago (when it was new), as I didn't care for it that much.
I've had a resergance of interest in Fish and various classic progressive rock musicians lately, and the remastered, re-released version of this album with bonus tracks gave me enough reason to re-purchace it.
I'm not disappointed at all! It's actually a pretty good album, with some flaws. Mr 1470, I think, is one of Fish's better songs. Somebody Special, Lady Let it Lie, and Fortunes of War are all great songs. The only song I really don't care for much is No Dummy.
Plus, I'm glad to say that the 2 bonus tracks (which I had never heard prior to this) are a couple of the best songs on the album and really add to it. Black Canal is a long, dark, mostly spoken word piece that sounds akin to something off of Sunsets on Empire, and Out of my Life is a great, upbeat accoustic track.
This album is really quite good, and I would definitely recommend the remaster to Fish fans.

There are certain events in everyone's life that they will never forget. Some are personal, some are on a grander scale. But guaranteed, you will never forget where you were when they occurred. I still remember where I was the day I bought Fish's "Suits". The day I popped it into my cd player and discovered my hero had fallen to depths of musical depravity I never could have envisioned him capable of. "Suits" is probably one of the worst recordings I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. And I did sit through it, from beginning to end, and I still recall the horrified looks on the faces of my two best friends--also Fish fans--as the disc progressed. I bought it for close to $30 at an import shop and sold it for about $10 a few months later. I couldn't even bear to look at it anymore. It wasn't until the release of Fish's "Sunsets On Empire" and the subsequent "Raingods With Zippos" that I was once again proud to own a Fish cd. The big man has come back, in a way, and I'm glad for that, but "Suits" is a blemish best left forgotten--and, if possible, buried.