A Blog

Lungfish - ‘My Fool Heart’ from Talking Songs for Walking (Dischord, 1992) [YT]

“Oh my my fool heart

I wish you were a walk through the park

Birds singing and trees creaking

Shoes I could fill that never needed breaking in

Oh my my fool heart

I wish you were a manifold part

Galvanized and weatherized

You got your 4-wheel drive to spiritualize it”

The nature/machine duality of emo. I’d been looking forward to getting this album on vinyl for some time - my collection is a little short on the heavier side of post-hardcore - but I think most of my associations with the album are, per the title, with walking, while listening on headphones. The repetitive, cycling rhythm of Lungfish works for me like an ambulatory version of motorik, or at least that’s how I experienced them at first. And I have to admit I’ve never appreciated any of their subsequent albums as much as this one, even though it operates like an origin point for a whole bunch of other sounds (here’s how I read EMA’s ‘Red Star’ through the aural lens of repetition and Lungfish). 

Lake Urmia, Iran / August 2016