The Shaky Hands' debut opens with an eventual bang-- hollow, harmonic guitar slides mimicking the sound of a whale. "I know all whales can sing" is not the most profound opening line, but the quick, rough rhythm sets an appropriate tone for an album is chock-full of rhythmic lullabies that hint at folk standards, 1960s pop icons, and the topical colorings of indie rock.
The album's first single, "The Sleepless", makes a seamless transition from the opener. It curls around the ear with the soothing homemade guitar strums last heard on the Shout Out Louds' Howl Howl Gaff Gaff. A sweet, diffident electric guitar and a kick drum build the structure of the song around soft, simple flashes of pulse and silence. The melody is familiar chords in a hop-skip decent; the chorus is a metallic clash of ardent relationship analysis. "Let's try it out now/ Breathe it in now/ And all we have is now." It's certainly no bucket of cold water, as lyrics go, but Nick Delffs (also of Castanets) contemplates a fine balance, meandering between bliss and its opposite in a slice of pleasing, sunny rock.
The band lists its first two influences on MySpace as "weather, the Beatles," and such candid sensitivity is completely obvious in its music. If the familiarity of "We Will Rise" approaches ubiquity, it's only because the Shaky Hands harness a sound that's been omnipresent for the past five years, permeating, if not always originating in, Portland and Seattle. The band's instrumental formula here combines minimal but clean fireside production with guitar, violin, the softest of percussion, and vocals that never overpower, instead relinquishing their grip to clarity of message. Sometimes that message is supposed to be unintelligible, emotive squirming, as on "I'm Alive". Foot taps make their entrance on this track, where Delffs quietly warbles for a long stretch of verse before another heavy, messy chorus makes its mark-- then the song is over. Such is the structure of the album, songs as short as pop songs, lackadaisically perky and energetically sulky.
"Another World, Pt. 1" appears halfway through the album, an interlude of feathery cymbals, lazy string pulls, and ponderous guitar strums: an indie orchestra tuning up. What bolsters the second half of the album is a more energetic turn to rock: Instead of splicing brief tracks with soft/hard alternations, "Host Your Day" has a more powerful bass line, a grating, minor-key guitar riff in one corner, a vigorous chorus that remains in the same creeping key, and "la la la" backup vocals. The pleasure of unaffected production means that "Whirling Wind" has a clean, organic, live flavor: guitar and vocals are coated in a hum of flutes and strings drawn out over the entire song. "Hold It Up", a doomsday, howling rush-through, hints at the built-up, near-anthemic structures of bands with bigger sounds. The material may not be breathtaking, but it's often invigorating, proving why this uncluttered, posture-free scene is more a scene than a fad.
