While he’s no one-trick pony, per se, it’s safe to say that Eric “Fishboy” Michener’s found a concept that works.
And make no mistake, concept, is the operative word here.
Since 2007’s Albatross rock opera, Fishboy’s output has been a steady collection of well-packaged, high concept works. To wit: Albatross was followed up by 2009’s NOM, which saw Fishboy handing over songs to outside musicians to flesh out; 2011’s Classic Creeps was an intertwining web of tales each featuring a cast of characters whose names all begin with the letter “A;” and last year’s IAMAVOLCANO EP chronicled the tale of a man dealing with the fact that he’s turning into a lava-spewing volcano.
So his latest opus — which delves into the tale of Topsy, the elephant that was famously publicly electrocuted on Coney Island in 1903 and in later years became kind of falsely attributed to a stunt by Thomas Edison to hype up the so-called dangers of alternating currents — isn’t that big of a departure. In Fishboy’s An Elephant LP and its accompanying 160-page graphic novel, Topsy follows up her execution with a few attempts at avenging her death before finally heading up to Elephant Heaven. All of these events, Michener says, will be reenacted onstage at Rubber Gloves as part of the LP’s official release show on November 15.
Before that, though, Fishboy was kind enough to pass along the video for the single “Bury My Body” as an exclusive Central Track premiere. Coming out just a day before Halloween, the timing couldn’t be better, either: The clip depicts the tomb of John B. Denton raising from the dead.
Oh, and there will be “blood.”
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