Shiver
"San Francisco's Shiver" CD reissue
Shadoks
Music
Genres: acid rock, heavy rock, heavy psych
Normal Records
PO Box 150 117
53040 Bonn
Germany
Jul 29 - Aug 6 2002 |
Shiver
was a late sixties/early seventies band that played heavy acid rock in
the vein of Iron Butterfly and Blue Cheer. This album is
a reissue of a 1972 recording the band did on an old, yet effective,
2-track machine. Re-released by Shadoks Music, a subdivision of
Germany's Normal label, it is a startlingly good artifact of the
seventies acid rock scene. While their brand of psych rock is
significantly heavier than that of the more popular bands of the era -
the scorching "Touch As Nails" is enough to make The
Seeds and Steppenwolf sound like Barbra Streisand -
they are no less psychedelic than any of the era's major outfits. In
fact, the band's amazing solos are enough to get any stoner's head in
the clouds. "Fixer", for example, sounds as if its straight
out of the seventies-era West Coast underground - blasting along with
yelled vocals and powerful, spacey guitar solos. "Up My
Sleeve", meanwhile, will get you moving immediately - its
scorching guitar work and super-fast drumming is enough to get anyone
shaking. And when the singer starts screaming along to the insane
instrumentation, you'll no longer be on this planet.
And, of course, there's the album's epic, "Alpha Man".
Like a cross between the melodic perfection of Zeppelin's
"Stairway To Heaven" and the acid-influences of Iron
Butterfly's "In A Gadda-Da Vida", the track starts
slowly, build up, halts, and then goes right into a devilishly catchy
chorus ("Baby I'm the alpha maa-aaa-aan!"). It's the
ultimate stoner paradise; head pounding riffs, brain boggling solos,
and stoned drumming all make appearances. You'll wish you could have
seen it played live.
Shiver's work is that rare stuff you hear so much about but
never actually come across; it packs all the energy of a live
performance onto one little cd. If you are at all interested in real
acid rock, go find this artifact, lie back, and let the music take
over your body. You won't be disappointed.
90%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 55 min 18 sec; 9 tracks; distributed by Forced
Exposure; reissued 2002] |