Oh, LA is a fun place, isn’t it? Actually, I can’t even stand looking at pictures of it, what with those overly pruned palm tree sidewalks and that big tacky picture of Mickey Mouse on the side of a roller coaster, but I heard it’s full of drugs and fast women, so I guess that’ll work for now.
But it gave us “Hotel California,” which was complaining about California, and it gave us Toxicity, which was complaining about California, and it gave us Californication, which was complaining about California, and it gave us The Reality of My Surroundings, which was complaining about California, and it gave us “Hollywood Bit**,” which was, um, complaining about California.
And it gave us “Before Tigers” by HEALTH, which was… not complaining about California. And this is the most lethal of them all. Don’t get me wrong: “Hotel California” might be the best song of all time, but it’s not physically cathartic: it doesn’t unearth your prior conception of music’s capability on a visceral, gut level, and, at least in the 21st century, it doesn’t drive people to unscrupulous means for achieving record deals, which I have a troubling suspicion is transpiring in the case of these Shadow Show characters, whose new record Silhouettes (perhaps appropriately titled) is now out on Burger Records.
I think I stopped following LA’s Burger on Facebook, ’cause they were so stupid [1]… they’d do things like release records on cassette tapes, which everybody knows sound like sh** but are a good measure for enacting a sort of artificial cultural warfare against people capable of enjoying music by CD, and all that savagery.
Generally their stylistic m.o. tends to be a sort of clear, admittedly well-produced, brand of surf rock (I wouldn’t be surprised if the same guitar and PA were used on the recording of every Burger release… typically their bands are too small-fry and their label understandably too discursively opaque in its promo to list recording sites). This is no different on Silhouettes, which starts in sounding, basically, AWESOME, like a record by The Garden. And it’s not that the singer’s voice is BAD, it’s just well, um, er, looking at the picture of these women if you’re a guy your mind doesn’t exactly float to political equality and cultural progression, if you know what I mean, but like she sort of sounds like singing is a chore for her. It’s like that one chick Snail Mail: it’s like can somebody tell this chick she can stop making music and become a bit**y Urban Outfitters cashier now?
But LA is the kind of place where three gorgeous women would want a record deal, and want to procure it by low methods, maybe, because the city is already full of so many other gorgeous girls who are just a little bit MORE gorgeous, or bustier, or have a cuter 11-pound dog that they take everywhere on a leash. You know how it is.
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[1] Although just to cop I did find their cartoon pretty funny, which was like of this giant gorilla getting his three foot di** sucked through a shed window by a little skeleton dude sitting in there… what kind of convenience store are they running there?