“shaker_day”
Shaker Day
No Way Out
This is Shaker Day’s second independently recorded album. This recording is much better than the first, but still fails to do anything for me. I thought that maybe it was just me. Maybe I am just too old to be able to appreciate it. Since I am not a real big fan of REM anymore, and since they do sorta recall REM at times, I thought that in all fairness, and since I do work at the same company as two of the band members, it’d be better if I bounced it off some true REM and alternative music fans rather than just pan it based on my tastes. I played it for my son and several of his teenage friends, to try and get an objective opinion. They all yawned in unison and left the room. That aside, I’ll give my opinion.
The individual musicianship on this CD shows that this band does have some promise, but I don’t think they gel collectively on their recordings. The songwriting is decent, but often doesn’t seem to quite fit the accompanying music. In my opinion, they should practice a little more use of light, or space, and lighten up on the shadows thing in their songs. There’s often way too much going on all at once, and the mixing or production also seems to occasionally place the wrong parts out in front. A sparser arrangement and a few tempo changes would’ve likely benefited this recording tremendously.
Shaker Day has been getting quite a few gigs at some fairly prominent clubs around Atlanta and in the Panama City Beach area, so their live shows are probably much better. I saw them several years ago, after I’d heard their first release, and that live show was much better than the release of that time. Who knows? Maybe they’ll eventually hook up with a heavy-handed professional producer and really get the kinks ironed out. Sorry guys, I tried.
