19 Jun 2018

Shannon In Nashville by Shannon Shaw

From The Sampler, 7:30 pm on 19 June 2018

Nick Bollinger surveys the southern excursion of Oakland soul belter Shannon Shaw.

Shannon Shaw

Shannon Shaw Photo: Alysse Gafkjen

Though it was recorded in Nashville, if you had told me this album was a lost classic from New York in the 1960s I would almost have believed you.

Shannon Shaw is a big-voiced, eyeliner-favouring singer from Oakland, California. For the past decade she has fronted Shannon and the Clams, a quartet who combine a feeling for old soul and Ronettes-style pop with a sense of economy more typical of punk. Their most recent album, released earlier this year, was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, who ratcheted up their production without sacrificing their essential rawness.

But this isn’t it.

This is another album, also produced by Auerbach, and it’s altogether more refined. For this set, Shaw has left her Clams in Oakland and set her mighty voice among the sounds of some of Nashville’s most senior session musicians. And the results are seductive.

Shannon In Nashville

Shannon In Nashville Photo: supplied

With twangy tremolo guitar, those high thin strings and cavernous quantities of reverb surrounding Shaw’s big emotive voice, we’re somewhere in the territory of the Brill Building circa 64, when the time that Time Square music factory was churning out high-drama hits for everyone from Dionne Warwick to The Shangri-La’s.

‘Make Believe’ could have been a hit for The Crystals. But there are also ingredients in this album that are endemic to Nashville, or at least were during that golden 60s era in which Shaw feels most at home. On a song like ‘Cold Pillows’ those square yet quintessential ‘ba-ba-ba-bum’ backing vocals might have fallen straight off the back of a Patsy Cline record.

Of course people were visiting the 60s as though it were a theme park long before Shannon Shaw came along, and some listeners hearing this are just going to think ‘Amy Winehouse’ – which this record does resemble in places. But Shaw seems to be made of sterner stuff. That much is apparent even when she’s crying her eyes out in the song of that name.

The title Shannon In Nashville pays homage to Dusty Springfield’s Dusty In Memphis and Elvis Presley’s Elvis In Memphis, both of which have stylistic echoes in these tracks. In fact, two of the musicians who played on those records – drummer Gene Chrisman and pianist Bobby Woods – appear here, and while they blend in with the younger players (including Dan Auerbach), they lend an inarguable certificate of authenticity.

You could say Shannon In Nashville longs for a bygone age; one of big analogue productions, genius session players and well-crafted, emotive pop melodies.

Then again, this album brings all of those things so convincingly into the present, we might be living in that age right now.