Shivaree's 1999 debut, I Oughtta Give You a Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in This Dump, served up a bolt of spooked Americana full of eclectic sounds and randy songs about spankings and cannibals. It flirted with cartoonishness, but thanks to the band's inventive overlay of organic and synthetic sounds and singer Ambrosia Parsley's honey-and-barbed-wire voice was ultimately more substantive. Despite that record's glowing reviews and Shivaree's modest audience, their 2002 follow-up, Rough Dreams, never saw release in the U.S.; to this day, it's available to American listeners only as a pricey import.
Earlier this year, "Goodnight Moon"-- a standout track from I Oughtta Give You-- was included on the Kill Bill 2 soundtrack, introducing Shivaree to a wider audience. Perhaps as a result of that exposure, the band's third full-length, Who's Got Trouble?, is slated for domestic release in January, with this EP, Breach, preceding it by a few months.
As its name implies, Breach is something like a partial birth: In addition to two new covers and a non-album track, the EP contains two songs from Who's Got Trouble? One of those is a cover of Brian Eno's "The Fat Lady of Limbourg", which Shivaree translates into a covert ops blues strut, driven by Danny McGough's chugging organ. Replacing Eno's saxophone with a guitar and piano, the song sounds evocatively conspiratorial-- topical in a vague way, but never overbearing-- as it describes a Pynchonesque underground network of agents, operatives, and waxen eggs.
Compared to that song, "I Close My Eyes" proves less of a departure for the band-- it would sound right at home on I Should Give You but it shows off their collective strengths to much better effect. It sounds like a cousin to "Goodnight Moon": both have strong melodies and instant hooks with lyrics about domestic ingenuity. Where "Goodnight Moon" was about the fear of being home alone and the precautions taken against imagined predators, on "I Close My Eyes" Parsley sings from the perspective of a beleaguered mother: "I close my eyes so I can dream of ways to keep you occupied/ So I can lock you up and we'll keep it classified." Whether she's addressing that statement to the child or the father is unclear, but Parsley sounds conniving instead of whining, certain she'll get her way if only she can figure out her best strategm.
Like her best songs, "I Close My Eyes" reveals an imagination hard at work, and the confidence in her voice and the concrete details in her lyrics imply that she could get herself out of any jam. That's precisely why the two non-album covers seem so disappointing: Both John Cale and Mike Scott are gifted songwriters, but Parsley sounds better singing her own material. Cale's "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend" is a lulling ode to paranoia, but despite Duke McVinnie's impressive bass work-- it never sounds as urgent as it should. And Parsley's duet with Ed Harcourt on the Waterboys' "Strange Boat" reveals little chemistry between the two singers.
\xCA Much better is the blend of vocals on the Shivaree original "657 Bed B", a sleepy-eyed duet with Verbena's Scott Bondy. As Shivaree provide credible C&W; backing, he and Parsley sing about a fateful hospital stay and their voices blend perfectly as they rhyme "goosies" with "moosies" without sounding cutesy. That the two best songs here-- "I Close My Eyes" and "657 Bed B"-- are originals speaks either to Shivaree's unique strengths as a band or to their weaknesses choosing covers. Straddling the line between for-fans-only and good-cheap-introduction-to-the-band, Breach accomplishes its chief mission-- to whet appetites for their next full-length.
