| CD REVIEW Shudderwall |
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Band: Shudderwall Hum…I’d rather I’d never come across the promo-CD of this French band, because in my personal view…nah, let’s start the biography bit first! This Nice based trio, consisting of siblings Emmanuel (principal lead vocals & drums), Christophe (guitar, vocals, occasional piano) and Florence (bass & all too rare backing vocals – read on to know more), had been playing the pub and club circuit in their South Of France with a certain degree of success, and decided to take a big step forward by recording a demo, shopping it around to anyone who might give it a play. Imagine their delight, when none other than respected producer Scott Andrews (who’s worked –in a recent past– with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ry Cooder, David Bowie, Neil Young, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, the Beach Boys and –in a further past– with the likes of George Harrison, Johnny Cash, Jerry Garcia, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Roy Orbison, John Lee Hooker, Brian Wilson, and Barbra Streisand) contacted the band, even making arrangements to fly over from California to work with them in Nice! He made the trip in August of 2007, then took the 11 songs the band recorded with him home to complete mixing and mastering. Apparently, the band followed their recordings, and played a couple of shows in California while they were over there. The album was originally distributed on Believe (cited in the biography as being “one of the leading European digital distribution companies) starting January 2008, and has since been picked up by other on-line distributors. Since then, the band has had over 300,000 plays on their MySpace page (myspace.com/shudderwall) and garnered more than 30,000 friends. Besides continuing to play the South of France mainly, the trio also played several gigs in Italy, and even did a couple of short “tours” (they’ve only played in London up to this moment) in the UK (another coming up in June, and again the shows are only in London). So, now it’s time to explain my rather negative introductory sentence, right? You see, it’s not the fact that the band apparently has a somewhat wide array of influences (going from Metallica to Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine on the one side of the “spectrum”, to the Beatles and Ben Harper on the other one) which they try to convey in their music…in fact that might even be seen as their strength, for bringing some variety in the whole: occasionally playing near-acoustic ballads, then switching to a near-Death track, next taking the Grunge road…you know what I mean? The thing is, both guys in the band sing their English lyrics with an accent which is só clearly French (even in the growls or other aggressive moments), it hurts! The only one who’s goot a decent voice, is the siren-like Florence, but she is heard only sporadically on the album…so maybe that’s why I didn’t hear hér accented English!?! Of course, you’re free to think what you like, and like whatever music you want as well, but if the earlier words didn’t frighten you off already, a listening session of the songs posted at the band’s MySpace sure might! In a way, I guess you would have to have French (or Canadian, for that matter) origins to fall for this band’s vocal stylings! A Grammy Award winner, Mathews is seen as a producer whose judgement is generally respected…but I have a hard time believing he didn’t do thís particular job just for the sake of a quick buck maker (not that he would have made on lot on this one, I guess). Anyway, even if the band has been so “successful” (you can fake that kind of thing these days) on MySpace already, the album’s been out there for almost 1 ½ years now, without being picked up byy any label…that should say enough about how the people on the selling-side of the music bizz feel about this trio’s material! Still, you know, barring the vocals, this album is actually quite okay! 74/100 Tony. |