The Shore is stuck within the trap of impersonation, sounding more like a cover band that has only ever heard Brit pop rock albums released between 1992 and 1996, than the nascent “it band” it’s label Maverick is bent on pushing.
The group’s debut, self-titled album, is overflowing with false, over-produced psychedelic clichés. Swirling electric guitars, tambourines and snore-inducing chorus lyrics like those on “Firefly,” “Spinning around … gets me high, gets me high.”
The Shore is made up of singer and guitarist Ben Ashley (who is also credited as the songwriter), guitarist Kyle Mullarky, drummer John Wilmer and post-album addition, bassist Cliff Magreta. The boys have an absolute fetish for twinkling, mellow rockers, the most obvious being late-greats, the Verve. But without the grimy British subject matter that the Verve let loose when they were at their best, the Shore share a more neo-hippy sentiment, opting for a modern version of flower power (the cover art should give that one away pretty quickly) and smiley, druggy wanderings.
On the album’s less-than-thrilling opener “Hard Road,” Ashley sings, “You’re taking the hard road / You never love anyone.” A useful tidbit of friendly advice until it is quickly muddled with one of the numerous drug/corny quasi-religious references, “Let me come down easy / Let me be reborn.”
The debut makes for pleasurable background noise. All the tracks are mixed nicely and the music itself is a smooth blend of Coldplay’s poppy ambience and acoustic-tinged, late night listening. It’s only upon close listening that the group falls way short of anything with substance. This is safe psychedelic for the watered-down, Clear Channel rock and pop sect. When the falsetto moan emerges midway through “Hold On” its hard to take the song’s longing male protagonist seriously as Ashley sings, “Lord I’m needing you so much / I’m so afraid of losing touch / Don’t you feel it when I say / Baby, please hold on to it.” The lack of substance, other than illegal ones, is overbearingly strong. These tracks sound like pure exercises in sounding like a band.
Apart from psychedelic exploitation, the Shore is also one of those bands that seems to have a very limited scope of analogy, leaning heavily on ocean symbolism (Ex: “Watching the tide fade away” = watching your haggard pot-head girlfriend ditch out on you for a death metal drummer when she can’t deal with any more Richard Ashcroft solo records) and the excessive use of “yeahs” and “oohs.” And a band called the Shore is obviously going to rock on ad nauseum about the saltwater wonders. The California sun must have dried the emotion and thought out of Ashley’s lyrical compositions.
While the Shore’s debut leaves much to be desired, music lovers looking for a real psychedelic treat or a beach-bum disc to drift along with should explore other options. Sub Pop’s latest disc from Comets on Fire collides with the kind of psychotic passion and musicianship that made psychedelic music once seem like the end-all-be-all of musical evolution. And West Indian Girl’s self titled debut (out on Astralwerks) is basically the late summer’s perfect bum out album. West Indian Girl makes lazy beach days seem far too few over the course of 45 lilting minutes.
As for the Shore, leave their debut at home and pack something with some substance in the beach bag as summer comes to a close.
Grade: D
