The Night Is A Disco is the latest release from experimental rock band Shiny Around The Edges. This piano-centric album is filled with deep gloomy vocals accompanied by the occasional complementary saxophone chorus. The dark nature of the album has a feeling as though you are riding a horse named Manuel, on a shiny merry-go-round at a shady abandoned fair.
The experimental rock, is just that, experimental. The album certainly isn’t for everybody, but what sets these guys apart from an amateur band making noise in their garage and calling it experimental is not only their talent as musicians, but their down to earth sensibility; at moments throughout the album you feel as though you might be sitting in their living room listening to them jam. The wife and husband core, Jenny and Michael Seman, collaborated with a host of others in creating the album and their loyalty to their local music community shows. Usually one of my favourite things about listening to experimental albums is discovering how they fit together and creating your own story as an album progresses, however, with The Night Is A Disco you don’t get that. The songs feel disconnected, and leave gaps between tracks that are filled with unrelated interludes of recorded sounds and noises. Quicklime stands out in the album, but not necessarily as a single, mostly because it literally sounds out of place, however it was written separately from the rest of the tracks and gives you a good perspective on what the band sounded like on their last album. Personally I like this new realm of music a lot better then the earlier angry stuff. Keep at it Shiny Around The Edges.
