Shield Your Eyes – Theme From Kindness (Function)
3/5
By: Chris Jones
New bass player Nick Bavin has been credited with strengthening the searching, experimental direction of Shield Your Eyes’ already pretty avant-garde leanings, and much of the unfussy beauty around this album comes from the fact that it was recorded in one weekend in Bavin’s living room. Far from bodged or amateur, the decision to keep things close to home is actually an inspired move, really recreating for the listener the intense S.Y.E. live experience
Spare a thought for the furniture though - Shield Your Eyes thrash about like a trapped animal, beating their instruments into making music. The first example of them exercising such wrath (and incidentally the best tune of the album by a long way) is ‘Baby You Made a kx250 Out of Me’, seven minutes of amazing guitar music that begins with a quick roaming drum intro before falling into an implacable hook. Later, amid much of their beloved guitar feedback, a sudden, purposeful drum explosion by Henri Grimes strikes, whilst Stef Ketteringham sings his throat raw alongside the mayhem.
Sadly the London based three-piece fail to match this opening blast for quality on the remainder of Theme From Kindness, much of which sounds too familiar to the rest of it to really stand out. The sonic flavour is predictably chaotic, but almost relentlessly so, and the cadence of most of the tunes is comparable in that long periods of smashing are usually about give way to short respites of slow rhythmic oases, following which the band just (albeit more than competently) rock out for the rest of the track. When they do depart from said formula, it works a treat, such as on ‘Aves’ – a melancholy jaunt with a delicate guitar and mandolin lead, Stef rasping forlornly in accompaniment. A side of the band they’d do well to explore further.
Shield Your Eyes often walk the line between beauty and disorder with poise, only becoming harder on the attention span when they get caught on the wrong side of that divide. Where the earlier songs in the running order display a control of that chaos, as Theme From Kindness develops, the tricks do become more predictable. That said, there’s certainly enough promise here to conclude that continued attention should, nay needs to, be paid to this talented trio of gentlemen, intent as they seem to be on not just frying your own brain, but that of your neighbours too.
Shield Your Eyes - Too Little Has Been Good For The Soul by Function Records
Artists in this article: Shield Your Eyes
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