Shivaree – I Oughtta Give You a Shot In The Head For Making Me Live In This Dump
I find records like Shivaree’s debut release troubling. Troubling like that high school kid who averaged 20 points a night for the hoops squad before getting kicked off the team for a DUI. There’s talent here: “potential” hangs over this disc like a silver vapor cloud. A cloud that dissolves into thin air when it’s put under the microscope for inspection.
Shivaree is West Virginia-by-way-of-San Fernando Valley vocalist Ambrosia Parsley and veteran backup musicians Duke McVinnie (who counts Exene among his former bosses) and Danny McGough (a Tom Waits sideman). Given this trio’s sheer breadth of experience, you’d figure that tasteful restraint would be Shivaree’s very watchword, but instead the group serves up a disc full of country-tinged songs rife with fifth wheels and nowhere-bound loose ends.
Sonically speaking, Shivaree is shooting for real estate near Joe Henry’s current address (which isn’t surprising, considering that he produced the disc): a little loop-da-drum-loop here, a little incongruous sampling there. The basic problem is that the songs just don’t need the distractions; they’re strong enough to stand on their own, but never truly get the chance.
In “Daring Lousy Guy” (an otherwise straightforward rocker concerning a love-hate relationship with a shiftless degenerate whose “kisses are like tape”), goofy drum machine fills and shards of disembodied Portishead-isms run the song aground, while “Cannibal King” falls squarely into the cutesy-cloying gimmick zone. This makes it difficult to decide if Shivaree is reaching for something “different” or is merely uncomfortable playing songs straight-up, with no irony chaser.
Still, not all is lost: the poignant “Arlington Girl” leans nicely toward Victoria Williams’ fractured desert fairy tales, while “Goodnight Moon” paints a vivid picture of a dysfunctional family circus. Perhaps with a different producer at the wheel, Shivaree could turn Sanford’s junkyard of musical ideas into a gilded palace of din.