Hearth Hearted

Big Bang Theory, I meant, of course, in the last post.

Not like when a soldier dies, the bit below.

Anyway, here's a record review from this month's Nightshift, amazingly the first ever to have no live reviews. This means I gave the only actual bad review in the whole issue, excluding the demo pages. Yay.



SHAKER HEIGHTS – SITTING IN THE FIRE (Download single)


This single features “exclusive artwork based on the music”. It’s a line drawing of a man staring at a wall in an empty room. Yep, that’s roughly how it makes us feel, too. The single is not precisely bad – it’s well made and shows evidence of talent – but it is dully anonymous. The title track starts with good ingredients, a maudlin country-inflected vocal and some pleasing keyboard embellishments, but doesn’t know what to do with them. After a repeating these fragments a few times, the song drifts to a halt, like a finance administrator who realises that people stopped listening to his quarterly sales report half way through.

The B-side “Poised As Robots” is apparently “attack-rock”, if the press release is to be believed, although in reality it chugs along cosily like a vintage traction engine. It’s a simple heartfelt tune that’s far superior to the A side, but it still has trouble asserting itself. It’s as if the band have no faith in what they’re doing. So, we’ve got about one twelfth of a Beautiful South song coupled with a self-conscious Then Jericho track. Hmm, might take a look at that wall for a bit.