Fourth Dimension

The stock of melodic Northumberland-based proggers Stuckfish has been rising since they formed six years ago. Their fourth studio album, Stuckfish IV, represents an important watershed in the band's musical evolution. Co-founders Adrian Fisher and Phil Stuckey tell Prog about the diverse influences that have helped to shape it.

- Alison Reijman

Musical inspiration springs from many obscure places, but Stuckfish’s co-founder Adrian Fisher hit on an unlikely source while in the queue for the Tyne Tunnel’s telephone hotline.

“The on-hold music had quite a nice keyboard sound, so after the phone call, I got out my Logic Pro and played around with a couple of chords which came pretty close to what I had heard,” recounts Fisher, the band’s guitarist, producer and composer.

With lyrics later supplied by fellow co-founder Phil Stuckey, this was the genesis of Fragile, the band’s first-ever three-minute pop song, which appears on Stuckfish IV. The north-east quintet’s fourth studio album is full of ‘firsts’.

“The whole Stuckfish ethos is always to try and do something we have not done before,” Fisher explains. “We also aim to please ourselves, so with every song, we ask ourselves, ‘Do we like it?’”

New features include intricate vocal harmony arrangements, previously untried guitar effects and a keyboards solo courtesy of recently arrived Paul McNally, who completes the line-up along with regular members drummer Adam Sayers and bassist Phil Morey. It’s also the first album that they’ve released on White Knight Records and the first with the bandname in its title.

With Bill Nelson, Muse, Kansas and David Bowie cited among Stuckfish IV’s influences, nine new songs showcase the latest enhancements to their traditionally melodic, thoughtful sound. Illustrating this perfectly is the opener, Shadows & Moonbeams, on which Stuckey’s vocal harmonies bring a particularly iconic song immediately to mind.

“Ade and I were chatting, and I mentioned that despite Kansas’s Carry On Wayward Son having an amazing and famous opening, it had not been reproduced very often, if at all,” he says. “We resolved to give it a try at some point.