Shiner – Lula Divinia – Review

Shiner

Lula Divinia (Hitit)
by Austin Nash

If you hear something that sounds too good to be true about Shiner, accept it as absolute truth or go fling yourself from the highest overpass in your locale as just desserts for your own stupidity. Shiner has single-handedly renewed my faith that the flavor-of-the-week-dicksuck bands wiping up the ass of the alternapunk movement will never kill that which bred them, but merely transform the milieu into something in which they themselves cannot survive. The strong will always prevail.

If this BS does not convince you, let me go on placing gemstones into the drawers of lula divinia by saying that receipt of the album is in itself the best thanks I have yet to receive for this mostly thankless job (discounting, of course, the two $10 drink tickets redeemable at the Rathskeller – I had 13 Rat Brews, thanks Scott).

Lula divinia is delicate and heavy, tuned down most of the way through, Moving Pictures Rushlike at times, and would have made the perfect follow up to Twitch’s last release on Grass. It’s unpredictable, dissonant, and boasts excellent vocal tracks for once (thank you, God). The combination of “Third Geer Scratch,” “Sideways,” and “Pinned” is alluring, dark in the middle, and brilliant around the edges. A sexy warm bitch silhouetted in the doorway of your run-down hovel. A leviathan Poseidon reaching for the clouds from a stormy sea. Frankly, this Kansas City trio has produced the best release I’ve heard in two years. It hasn’t left my CD player in two weeks. Brash, powerful, a rainbow screaming from a pot of shit. If this album had an ass, I would kiss it like the feet of Christ.