Two albums into their career, the Mass Shivers sound like a band that's either on the brink of an innovative discovery or haplessly toiling over a Sisyphean task. Ecstatic Eyes Glow Glossy, the Chicago group's second album, takes an ambitious stab at grafting a sweaty classic rock libido onto Krautrock rhythms-- rhythms that inherently kill the mood with their cold uniformity.
The Shivers' 2005 debut established them as artists first, musicians second, though the album owed much of its cerebral post-punk to contemporaries like Q and Not U and 31 Knots. On Ecstatic, the Shivers attempt to expand their minds with a heavy dose of psychedelic rock-- the most common ground between their mathematical tendencies and new-found classic rock virility. Opening track "Womanizing Metal Studs" serves as a telling introduction, featuring a hefty blues riff that repeatedly straightens out into a drone as a motorik beat pulses underneath. Singer Brett Sova lets out several husky growls full of a whole lotta love, but rather than arriving at an ejaculatory chorus, they succumb with the guitar riff to the song's sturdy rhythmic backbone.
The clash between Sova's animated vocals and the band's sober instrumentation rages on throughout most of Ecstatic. Although occasionally his gruff exclamations play off the band's mechanical precision, like on frenetic highlight "Mossy Nethers", Sova can also sound oddly out of synch with his backing music. On closer "Wild Animals Club", he spouts off hammed-up non sequiturs echoed by equally affected backing vocals, while on "Downwind of Amour" his melody mostly lags behind the much more interesting guitar part its mimicking. Ironically, the vocals shine brightest here when the spotlight's dimmed. Rather than shoving them into the foreground, "Pacific Ash" and "Because the Sun" allow their layered vocal parts to dissolve into the druggy haze of guitar drones and feedback, and noise collage "Quinine Peninsula Pt. 2" dives head-first into an acid trip, uninterrupted by coherent lyrics or macho croons.
Ecstatic's brief duration is unfortunate considering its best tracks benefit from repetition and loose song structures. For all the sub-three-minute songs, there's a scarcity of snappy ideas here, making Sova's more dramatic vocal parts sound pretty forced without the aid of syncopation or hooks. Despite the eccentric nods to Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, the Shivers don't quite possess enough oddball charisma, and their freakouts sound much more comfortable over meticulous beats and prolonged jams anyways. Ecstatic is a commendable effort at trying to spice up the stoic elements of krautrock; it just doesn't seem to play to the Shivers' collective strengths.
