Shoun Shoun: A Hundred Trips and going with them....
Updated: Apr 25, 2019
Written by Chris Watson and edited by Sara Vian, April 2019
This is an EP that may well go on a hundred trips; whether labelled dream pop, garage or Dietrich meets Velvet Underground - it doesn't matter as it is a sound that could stay in your dreams and not the garage. This is stylish music and definitely rock noir....
These are songs that tell stories of bleak City life and people who are not what they seem, acting out an existence or addicted.
With intriguing arrangements and the added glorious dimension of lysergic effects from the violin and keyboards of Boris Ming, this Bristol band conveys an urban ennui that reflects Bristol as well as the Berlin hometown of songwriter, singer, guitarist Annette Berlin. With exotically named band members, Boris Ming, Amy Hag and Ole Rudd...this band exudes urban mystique...
Annette's songs evoke a Siouxsie and the Banshees feel, bringing back memories of Happy House and Hong Kong Garden, but with her own sublime guitar sound. Could Annette's songs reach such success? I would stick my steely Sheffield neck out and say "yes, I feel that they can".
"I'm Fine" leads out, and was also a single; obviously the subject of the song is not absolutely fine and the song gives an almost sleazy "Cabaret/Club" feel with tones of Tarantino's Pulp Fiction; sweet interludes pervade then it suddenly sends you down a bleak underground subway, echoing the vastness of Berlin where a plethora of graffiti glowers menacingly at you, one of the features I remember from a visit some years ago.....
"City Girl" is about the pointless and endless City night's out with the realisation that life has left you behind when you thought you were living it...an edgy song but with soft sympathetic passages that lull the pain of loss...
"Let them in"- catchy harmonies with menace hidden behind and conveying a panic realisation of someone with nowhere to go...
"A Hundred Trips", which explores Bristolian Cary Grant's LSD habit.....and the most enjoyably ambient track with glorious harmonies and unsettling but powerful echoing effects from Boris which simply excite.
"Masquerade" with an uncomfortable driving beat but with delivery from Annette that conjures Siouxsie Sioux before me; the track injects a lush change of tempo mid song to bring peace for a brief flash in time...
This is an EP that leaves me wanting more and Annette and band will be delivering more soon soon....
Find out more: https://www.facebook.com/shounshounbristol/
Listen free or buy at: https://shounshoun.bandcamp.com/album/a-hundred-trips