If you’re familiar with Fish Narc, it’s probably through his work within the expansive GothBoiClique universe—an LA-based collective of emcees and producers known for veering into the lane of pop-punk and emo without straying too far from cloud-rap conventions. I’m sure you also know that one of its most famous figures, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, is the former singer of Tigers Jaw, but you may not realize that most of these guys have background in DIY punk: Døves, for example, released slacker-rock demos as Suicide Forest prior to GBC, while Horse Head led the similar Tan Dollar.
For Fish Narc’s Ben Funkhouser, his origin story lies with Hausu, a post-punk outfit based out of Portland that released a single album through the PNW’s own Hardly Art Records in 2013. With this in mind, his latest solo LP, Frog Song, feels like the closing of a loop in a number of ways. Released via another indie staple of the region, K Records, Frog Song is a return to full-band instrumentation, weaving together a similarly complex web of ’90s alt-rock subgenres explored 12 years ago on Total. The album track “Old Band” is even about his experience in Hausu, “a great band with a terrible dynamic,” as he puts it in his track-by-track breakdown of the new record. “There was a long time that I felt so alienated from the experience that I never wanted to be in a band again.”
While none of the other tracks on Frog Song explicitly touch upon this experience, the album conceptually feels like a return home to his familiar DIY scene circa the early 2010s, whether it be through dusting off some of the old compositions he’d written around that time or fondly looking back on the memories they were created within. With the new LP out today, stream along and read through his thoughts on each song below. You can also stream or purchase the album here.
1. “My Ceiling”
I came to see my first two “rock” records, WiLDFiRE and Camouflage, less as alt-rock and more like SoundCloud rap with alt-rock beats. A lot of those songs were written and recorded via punch-in, freestyle vocal takes, and even though they use rock styling, structurally they’re closer to rap. “My Ceiling” feels kind of transitional, since the verse cadence is inspired by the Life Without Buildings “Leanover” flow, which I associate with my earlier projects and more intermediate hybrid music, but the hooks were written songwriter-style. It took a little bit of re-working to be able to sing the verse without skipping lines, since I wrote them one bar at a time. I’ll never stop writing with this method, but this song definitely marks the end of that era of my own songwriting.
2. “Old Band”
Before I joined Thraxxhouse/Gothboiclique in 2014, I’d been participating in a loosely organized regional underground rock scene, which seemed to fizzle out until the tragic Ghost Ship fire of 2016 caused it to completely end. I grew up checking the seattlediy.org calendar, attending collective meetings and house shows, and wrote dozens of songs that never got recorded (and were never intended to be). My final project from this phase was a band called Hausu. We were based in Portland, Oregon, and released a 7-inch and one full-length record called Total on Hardly Art Records in 2013. It was honestly a great band, with a terrible dynamic. I’m friends with two-thirds of the other members now, but there was a long time that I felt so alienated from the experience that I never wanted to be in a band again. This song scratches at the ambiguity of the whole thing—I knew it was bad in my memory, but I felt so proud at the same time. I really actually still don’t know how I feel about it.
3. “Boxy Volvo”
My girlfriend Emma, the band’s bassist and in-house designer, drove this 1991 Volvo station wagon when we first met, and a lot of my early memories of spending time together occurred in that car. We moved from NYC to Olympia, Washington together, and I know she gave up a lot to do that with me, including that Volvo. She was back in NYC for a while working on her band Phantasia (go listen), and I was home alone trying to write “better” songs when this song just kinda sprung out of me. I’m not a natural, and songs don’t usually happen this way—I typically have to grind and doubt and worry until the clock runs out, and I just gotta submit and move on. “Boxy Volvo” just sort of wrote itself. What did Horse Head say? “I didn’t write this song, you did.”
4. “Return in Flames”
I wrote this song with Ava [Smith, of Cage World] during the album sessions in April 2024. She made the instrumental in, like, 30 minutes one morning. Musically, it’s this happy-sounding pop song, but the lyrics are pessimistic. I’m an amateur naturalist and spend a lot of my free time observing plants or fungi. The lens that this has given me is a gift and a curse; I’m constantly awed by nature in every setting, while at the same time irreversibly aware of how fucked most ecosystems are under capitalist management. This song is about the prairies and oak savannas around where I live in Olympia. Indigenous people here used controlled burning to maintain wide open spaces where large oak trees and meadows of edible bulbs provided food, shelter, and landmarks.
5. “Crystal Ball”
This song is a reimagination of the first Fish Narc vocal track, which was on the 2016 GothBoiClique group project Yeah It’s True and credited to “Official.” I’d been playing it as a solo song for acoustic guitar on tour before the album sessions, and I wanted to fully flesh it out. Ava’s production and drums really took it beyond what I would’ve done myself. I might start re-recording other old songs.
6. “Can You Ever Really Know?”
I tend to catastrophize and overthink shit if I let myself. Sometimes it’s beyond my control, other times I use specific skills to regulate my emotional reactions. I really don’t fixate on the past as much as I used to, and I hope I’m done wondering if I could’ve been someone else. I’ve gotten lost in the sauce before, extendedly. It’s really easy to do, and it may happen again. Yes, it is inspired by “Broadway” by the Goo Goo Dolls…I gotta shout out my bestie, Victimof, the singer of Physique, for putting me on to that song—although I later found out that it was World Bastard, also of Physique and formerly of G.L.O.S.S., who showed her that track in the first place. Did you know that the USA’s top crasher band were pop-rock enthusiasts?
7. “Cluefinder”
There was this band called Broken Water in Olympia in the 2010s that influenced me and a lot of other people. They sounded like they could’ve existed in a previous era in the same place. I think this song reflects the influence of Broken Water, as well as of previous eras of Olympia music. Nodes get cut, but the roots stay locked in. I wrote it one day after I wrote “Old Band.”
8. “Interstate”
I wrote “Interstate” right before “Boxy Volvo,” after a tour in late 2023. I really wanted to be able to make complete songs with just my voice and guitar. It's a bit of a cliché, singing about traveling, but I’m trying to relate, and I really do mean it. Why did I think I was so special I needed to make something fancy to talk my shit over? Ava helped render this song into something more complete, but still fairly plain. The lyrics describe a trip I made with Lil Tracy (then known as Yung Bruh) to Seattle from LA when both of us were moving home. I wasn’t sure if he and I were gonna stay as close friends as we were then, and I was scared of being disconnected from my new crew in California. Today, he’s still one of my best friends in the world, and I recently flew down to help him drive his stuff back to Washington, cycle repeated.
9. “Never Better”
Lately I’ve been heavily influenced by the MTV Unplugged performances of various ’90s artists. Some of them are lackluster, worse versions of the originals; others are too zany. The best ones enhance the original and exist alongside it. Alice in Chains’ is my favorite, both sonically and how the songs hit. I wanna make a whole album using the instrumentation from that performance. Korn’s is really good, also, but I didn’t hear it until after I made the record.
10. “Gas Station”
I categorize this song with “Interstate” and “Boxy Volvo,” because it was written in the same period of time with the same headspace. Driving, being in the car, etc., is a major theme on this album (again). I honestly hate how monotonous American road travel can be, with little regional variation of any kind along the major routes. At the same time, the brightly lit interior of a gas station store is so comforting. Sometimes I think about what if Peep hadn’t died on tour and we had driven back from Arizona to California together. I didn’t have money for a last minute flight after he died, so I just stayed on the tour bus, rode it through the desert, and hopped out in LA the next day.
11. “Blueberry”
Just a little song about Gile’s Blueberry Acres, an old farm in Olympia that I like to pick berries at. Living in Olympia has allowed me to dive back into the lifestyle I had as a kid; spending lots of time outdoors, picking and freezing gallons of berries to eat during the winter. It’s a bit slower here, but I genuinely love it so much. Picking berries will always be a core part of me.
12. “Disregulated”
The joy of life! So hard to remember sometimes, but always close at hand. My brain processes stuff kinda funny, and I often find myself fluctuating between drastically different dispositions and moods. It can switch almost instantly, and it’s hard to predict what the trigger will be. Flip-flopping between extremes is exhausting, and sometimes even the good stuff makes me sad. Is this TMI? I’m supposed to describe this song, but here I am oversharing—maybe they’re the same thing?
