Fishbone, The Reality of My Surroundings (CBS Records)

Fishbone’s latest album is a slight departure from their heavily-produced and more homogenous predecessors. In interviews, the band has stated that this album demonstrates the stylistic diversity of various influences that have had an impact on them. That’s pretty accurate, and it’s obvious that the band’s influences are horizontal. The tracks are more “raw” sounding than on previous albums; Fishbone’s highly energetic style is clearly heard. This album features a potpourri of eclectic styles, including ska (“Housework”), soul-funk (“So Many Millions”) and the thrashy “Fight The Youth.” The album is also littered with sound effects and various pseudo-conceptual tracks, including a series entitled “If I Were A… I’d…” where each time a different scenario is portrayed (“If I…believed everything I saw on television, I’d …think like the Brady Bunch / eat Wendy’s for lunch / drive a Datsun Subaru and never question much”). The band’s sociological cynicism is more blatant than ever in this latest release; however, they seem to have traded their previous, more subtle method of sending a positive message for an obscenity-embedded style of “shock rock” on many tracks. The album’s title is justification for the graphic nature of much of the new material: people who live in plastic bubbles probably won’t care much for the album, but the rest of us will appreciate it.