Hagfish

Rescued from the demos that had been rejected by their record company a year earlier, this 1997 eponymous release was something of a letdown for critics and fans who had been bowled over by Hagfish's previous offering, the exhilarating Hagfish...Rocks Your Lame Ass. Yet, surely no one was more disappointed than the bandmembers themselves, who suddenly found themselves forced to start from scratch after such a promising beginning a few years earlier. And sure enough, though at first listen they seem to possess all the key ingredients (punchy riffs, sweet harmonies, sardonic lyrics) of the band's earlier work, songs like "Band" and "Closer" ooze with a badly concealed air of disillusion at their own dwindling fortunes. Still, Hagfish manages to deliver some top-notch tunes in album highlights "Envy," "Fruit," and "100% Woman," all of which are as good as anything they'd done before.