One Track Mind

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One thing that’s certain about Los Angeles combo Shadow Shadow Shade is that they’re unafraid of the grand gesture: their seven member lineup contains not only two drummers but a bona fide opera singer. They changed their name from Afternoons to avoid confusion with a similarly named Welsh outfit, but one suspects they would have changed their name anyway. A fairly prosaic name like Afternoons isn’t really equal to the task of defining what the band is up to.

On their musical calling card “Is This a Tempest in the Shape of a Bell,” Shadow Shadow Shade aren’t content to simply record a pop song. No, the thing seems to consist of movements, kicking off with a bit of random noise that seems to be Gregorian chants played backwards before blasting off into a hooky bit of pop business sounding a lot like ELO playing The Stooges. Over the next several minutes there’s an orchestral pomp-rock bridge that bleeds into a Bunnymen style section and then some more hooky pop business before blasting into a by-then inevitable swelling coda complete with soaring wordless vocal harmonies.

By all rights it should be a complete mess and maybe it is, but it succeeds in its sheer nerviness anyway. If a band is going to overreach on such a grandiose scale, they’d best have the chops to make it work. On the evidence presented here, Shadow Shadow Shade would seem to have those chops. Hopefully their promised full-length album (slated for a late summer release date still TBD) will show that they’re able to stretch them out over the long haul.