The Heligoats' Chris Otepka writes songs that are brainy in the best way: clever without straining for cuteness, wry but never smug. Ideas flow out of him in a barrage, which means that a song about science — like "I'm Pretty Sure I Can See Molecules," by his ludicrously underappreciated former band Troubled Hubble — ultimately unfurls into a knockout commentary on what we're made of, what our lives mean, and how the two notions intersect.
"Fish Sticks," from The Heligoats' forthcoming album Goodness Gracious, requires multiple listens to pin down its meaning; the song churns so urgently — it's so overstuffed — that it can be hard to parse. At its core, though, it's about a guy who starts a biosphere in a swamp, only to discover that doing so alienates him from both the world he's escaping and the one he's made for himself.
Whichever side of the fishbowl he's facing, Otepka doles out observations and sonic adventure with tremendous generosity. He writes like someone who's always taking things apart to see how they work, who's obsessed with circuitry and ecology, so it's no surprise that his songs practically burst with intellectual curiosity. Otepka may yearn for evolution to reverse itself — "Let's just turn back into amphibians / Let's just tread until our legs give in / and start over" — but his mind will never slow down enough for him to find that kind of simplicity or peace. Thank goodness for that.
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