Their own website states that Fish & Bird were "raised on equal parts roots music and Radiohead", and while you won't hear anything identical to Thom Yorke's band on the Canadian quintet's fourth album, you won't hear anything identical to Mumford & Sons either.
Like Radiohead, Fish & Bird refuse to be bound by genre conventions, so while this is country-folk music in a very real sense - the sharp/sweet divide of banjo and fiddle is drawn from a centuries-old tradition - the liberated jazz beat of Zoe Guigueno's upright bass and Taylor Ashton's indie-rock approach to both lyrics and singing style lift the album away from expected territory to somewhere that's invigoratingly free of restrictions. Cold Salty breaks the mould right from the word go, its pizzicato body snaking around sudden changes in key and tempo, and when they do fall back on bluegrass traditions (on The Lake and Boots), the rhythms pop and spark in a manner that old-timers simply wouldn't recognise. The bar has been duly raised.
Alan Morrison
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