{"id":26695,"date":"2024-01-22T05:30:57","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T10:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26695"},"modified":"2024-01-14T08:45:52","modified_gmt":"2024-01-14T13:45:52","slug":"album-review-shiva-burlesque-mercury-blues-skullduggery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/22\/album-review-shiva-burlesque-mercury-blues-skullduggery\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Shiva Burlesque \u2013 Mercury Blues + Skullduggery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-26696\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/shiva_burlesque.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/shiva_burlesque.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/shiva_burlesque-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/shiva_burlesque-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Independent Project Records continues its dazzling campaign of thoughtfully curated compilation\/reissue releases with <i>Mercury Blues + Skullduggery<\/i>, a 21-track set of music from L.A.-based Shiva Burlesque. With a sound vaguely reminiscent (in places) of early Dream Syndicate crossed with The Gun Club, the band\u2019s style didn\u2019t fit comfortably into any of the prevailing musical trends of the late \u201880s and early 1990s. Folk rock is an obvious touchstone, and some listeners compare Shiva Burlesque&#8217;s sound to Echo and the Bunnymen. But there are sonic references in their songs that connect the group&#8217;s sound to The Doors by way of Cannibal and the Headhunter (\u201cDo the Pony\u201d) with a dash of The Cult.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, the folky textures of \u201cCherry Orchard\u201d hearken back to the Beatles\u2019 India excursion that informed their White Album. \u201cSick Friend,\u201d on the other hand, fits well into the alt-rock of the era, sounding like the hit it wasn\u2019t destined to become. Song titles like \u201cChester the Chimp\u201d might telegraph a sense of humor, but the song\u2019s insistent beat and eerie ambiance take it somewhere else entirely.<\/p>\n<p>IPM\u2019s release pairs 1990\u2019s <i>Mercury Blues<\/i> with a passel of demo tracks, but newcomers should know that in the case of this group, \u201cdemos\u201d doesn\u2019t signal lack of a fully formed musical vision. The demo of \u201cChrome Halo\u201d is as hypnotic as the official version (both are included here). And tunes like the buzzing, unsettling \u201cNez Perc\u00e9\u201d have enough character to qualify as finished tracks (even if they might not be).<\/p>\n<p>For established bands, eclecticism can be a virtue; for a group attempting to gain a foothold in a coded musical marketplace, refusal (inability?) to commit to a definable style makes them hard to sell. So it\u2019s up to the listener to decide if Shiva Burlesque&#8217;s unfocused character is a feature or a bug. True, some cuts (\u201cWho is the Mona Lisa,\u201d to name one) only hint at what a proper studio recording might have sounded like, but they do so in intriguing fashion, and are well worth hearing.<\/p>\n<p>After only a pair of albums \u2013 a self-titled 1987 record and <i>Mercury Blues<\/i> \u2013 the group split, its members (Grant Lee Phillips most notable among them) going on to other projects. Independent Project Records\u2019 lavish double-LP release serves the memory of this comparatively underground and short-lived outfit quite well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Independent Project Records continues its dazzling campaign of thoughtfully curated compilation\/reissue releases with Mercury Blues + Skullduggery, a 21-track set of music from L.A.-based Shiva Burlesque. With a sound vaguely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,64,65,73],"tags":[5314],"class_list":["post-26695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-shiva-burlesque","cat-19-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26697,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695\/revisions\/26697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}