Shiny Around the Edges Secrets of the Double Blind

Publication: www.deulsionsofadequacy.net
Reviewer: David Virden

There's a commonly held belief in Major League Baseball that a person cannot tell how good or bad a team is unless they witness them play on a regular basis. The subtle nuances, level of physical and mental errors, and amount of illegal growth hormones the team has ingested can't be easily discernable to even the most sophisticated baseball fan who only gets the chance to watch the team in person a few times a year. At a certain extent, the same can be said of musicians.

To outsiders, the MC5, Husker Du, or Nirvana may be three of the greatest rock bands of all time, but some folks from Detroit, Minneapolis, or Seattle – who were there in the trenches – will gladly tell you that there were 10 or 15 bands from that same town and era that were as good as or better than the three aforementioned artists. Unfortunately, Denton, TX isn't really known for much more musically than as the place where Roy Orbison, Don Henley, and Tex Watson went to school, as well as the hometown of Brave Combo (polka band who covered the Doors and won a Grammy) and Brutal Juice (they played really loud and were on a major label in the mid 90s), so it would be kind of silly that to proclaim that there were 10 or 15 bands floating around Denton that were better than The Eagles or the Charles Manson Experience way back when.

However, Shiny Around the Edges (as well as yours truly) live in Denton, and local music scenes these days are truly what is keeping the flames of independent rock from burning out (or fading away), so here we are. Shiny Around the Edges is a husband/wife duo (they’ve recently added a third member) that plays discordant, surround-sound, haunting, atmospheric rock similar to Things We Lost in the Fire-era Low and the Swans. The band carries with it a little bit of arty pretentiousness, but not an overbearing amount.

The finest moments on Secrets of the Double Blind include the quivering monotone vocals of Jennifer Seman (especially on “Autumn Sleep”), the welcome addition of ambient blips and bleeps (“Just Below”), and those loud, atonal guitars that sound and feel like an itchy radiator turned up full blast (“Reading Scripts,” “Waiting for the Night”). Live, these songs, along with hypnotic covers of Neil Young and Velvet Underground classics, transcend into something louder, greater, and more powerful than simple art-house cacophony.

Don’t look for Shiny to lead the next independent revolution or ascend to rock Valhalla status. However, the band produces solid recordings and stellar performances. And since the best and most interesting artists these days are not pseudo-indie bands located on college radio or in music zines, but rather local bands found via the Internet, Shiny Around the Edges is a nice discovery… and as far as I know, they don’t take steroids.