A few posts back I told you guys about Jamendo. Here’s the first post on a band I discovered over there.

Smoke Fish is a French band comprising of Shay on guitar and keyboards as well as handling the vocals, Jonathan on guitar and keyboards, PY on drums and Jean Se on bass. They cite David Bowie, Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jeff Buckley, John Lennon among others as their influences. There music is pop-rock. They have an album called Mary up on Jamendo and I have decided to feature my favourite track from that album on this post. Most of their compositions, though quite varied in approaches and styles have one thing in common – a healthy stress on melody, which is a good thing and ignored by many bands more often than not!

My favourite track after a few listens has to be a long drawn out (it is almost nine minutes long), beautiful song called My Eyes. The song is characterized by the haunting piano refrain and the distorted vocals. It even has a short spoken-not-sung section in the middle. The guitar solo towards the end, though not technically grand, blends in perfectly with the song which should be seen as an example of tight song-writing above anything else. That is the best quality of this song – it is greater than the sum of its parts. No virtuosity here, but a mature song nonetheless.

Also found a video of them performing live. The first part of the video is My Eyes and the second part is my next favourite from this album called Cigarettes & Family.

Smoke fish – Live @ La Carène