Shivering Timber. Sing Sing.
Shivering
Timbers, 2012.
Shivering Timbers’ first full album, Sing Sing, is a strange mixture of
genres blended together with a heavy stock of indie rock. This what I’d
consider more of a folk band than anything else and Sing Sing’s title track has an indie pop quality to it. Sarah and
Jayson Benn have a good collaboration and the songs are both melodic and
chaotic. While many people in the music world suggest avoiding relationships in
the band, lest you end up writing the overplayed “Don’t Speak” or anything from
the oeuvre of Captain and Tennille, but often the married couple thing works.
In this case, I don’t think the fact that Shivering Timbers happens to be a
married couple detracts at all, and I hope they are enjoying or not enjoying
the groupies accordingly to their previously agreed upon arrangement that may
or may not exist. And I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.
“Holly Holy” (a cover of the Neil Diamond tune) is a slower
track, a little boring at the beginning, but the song shows power in the vocals
which can fall behind in many indie tracks. It’s easy for a female artist to
have her range pushed to the back burner in favor of “haunting” qualities,
especially in Indie Rock (is anyone else as tired of Zooey Deschenal as I am?) It
has a neat sixties folk sound to it with heavy drumbeats., sort of a Joan Baez/Grace
Slick sensation.
Less indie and more electric folky, “Generations” is a
great tune lyrically and melodically. The echoing of the vocals works with the
rawness of the electric guitar. Grungy bass layers nicely and the band sounds
united.
Shivering Timbers has the intimacy on the Weepies
(married couple and band mates), albeit with a harsher, howl to it like good
old country songs. There is something so earnest about the sound that I didn’t
roll my eyes once, which is pretty much my go-to reaction. I was really hoping
for something from the song “D.H. Lawrence,” being a literature nerd, but it
blended into the song before it so the place in the album didn’t make it stand
out. Actually I didn’t realize it was a different song until it was almost
halfway over, which is never good.
Cold
Mountain and the Civil War can be heard in the bluesy country
tracks like “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” and the cover of “Wayfaring Stranger”
(which is right up there with “Hallelujah” when it comes to overly-covered
songs). While this isn’t my favorite rendition of “Wayfaring Stranger,” I think
it would have been better without the ornamentation, it’s still solid. It was brave
to remix the tempo and bit, modernizes it, which is more of a change than most
artists would bother to attempt.
All Our Days is very She and Him which I find
particularly irritating since I hate them and the entire concept of “Adorkable”
is ridiculous to me. However, this is the trend of Indie Rock these days and
I’m willing to forgive Shivering Timbers for this since so much of their stuff
has a bluesy layer to it.
Overall, Sing
Sing is a good, full bodied piece of work and Shivering Timbers have a
creative and cool sound that has enough country to it to make it stand out
among the “indie” wave.
Personnel: Sarah
Benn (vocals, upright bass), Jayson Benn (electric guitars, backup vocals),
David Marhcione (drums, bells), Dan Kyshwanis (drums, bells)
Tracks: Sing
Sing, Holly Holy, Generations, Without Someone, D.H. Lawrence, Annalee, Satan,
Your Kingdom Must Come Down, Wayfaring Stranger, All Our Days, Big Fire, I Love
You So Much, The Mopping Floor, Boys and Girls.
Lauren Parker
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