A new review of the still-new "World Will Be Different" album in VERBICIDE MAGAZINE compares Howard's vocals to the late, great Johnny Cash, calls the album "steady, subtle and organic" and says that "If you’re into Damien Rice or Tom Waits you have to give this a spin."
"The Howard Fishman Quartet Vol. III: Moon Country" will be released this September. Howard's tenth CD find him reuniting with original HFQ bandmates Russell Farhang and Peter Ecklund, along with longtime bassist Andrew Hall, on a set of Hoagy Carmichael songs (many of them obscure) including "Hong Kong Blues," "How Little We Know," and "I Walk With Music."
A CD release party has been announced for September 25th at the legendary Algonquin Oak Room in NYC. Tickets on sale soon!
BETTER GET RIGHT is Howard Fishman's love letter to New Orleans, featuring his "Biting Fish Brass Band" working out on a dizzying array of new originals ("Since You've Been Gone, "Tee Na Na"), soulful traditionals ("Down By The Riverside," "When I Die"), and at least one funky cover from left field ("Mexican Radio").
NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS is a song cycle about Fishman's travels through rural Romania with a childhood friend, and what Howard in his liner notes calls "the strange and beautiful adventures we had there." The album features Fishman's vocals and guitar enveloped by lush arrangements for strings, accordion, piano, banjo and horns (with a bit of nasty electric guitar and bass thrown in for good measure).
THE WORLD WILL BE DIFFERENT is a new suite of songs about love won and lost, featuring a stripped-down combo of guitar, bass, drums and piano accompanied by a string quartet, Fishman's most personal and intimate album to date.
"BETTER GET RIGHT" is the first of a trilogy of albums Howard will release this year. Recorded simultaneously in 2009 at Hoboken Recorders, the three recordings feature Howard fronting an overlapping ensemble of musicians exploring life in three distinct musical locales. "BETTER GET RIGHT" is inspired by New Orleans. The other two, "NO FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS" and `THE WORLD WILL BE DIFFERENT" occupy entirely different musical and geographic landcapes: Romania and Brooklyn, NY, respectively. Stay tuned for release dates coming soon!
A love letter to New Orleans, BETTER GET RIGHT features Howard backed by his New Orleans-style brass band “The Biting Fish,” in a set of new originals interspersed with new takes on traditionals and gospel from the "street" repertoire of the Big Easy. New Orleans was the singers's home as a struggling street musician when he first began, a place whose mystery and gravitational pull have continued to exert an indelible mark on his music.