Shades Apart – Seeing Things – Review

Shades Apart

Seeing Things (Revelation)
by Austin Nash

If cinema ever reverts to rehashing the ’80s style Mad Max format, look for Shades Apart to be pounding out the soundtrack behind the one with the bad bitches in it. The new album, Seeing Things, leaves me running down an empty glass-strewn street with a dog on my heels taking bites out of my ass, trying to remember where I left my shoes. It makes me feel good about peeling back the skin from a blister to the point where it’s catching a piece that’s still alive. It’s that large machine growling and rendering an automobile to fist- sized chunks for scrap in under a minute. It’s a bomb blowing windows out of buildings 18 miles away in industrial New Jersey. But with finesse.

Shades Apart toured with the Descendents throughout March and April of this year, and are currently on another nationwide tour or in Europe, I’m not sure which. That helps a hell of a lot, doesn’t it? I guess I just brought that up as a contrived segue into the part where I tell you that Seeing Things sports the oh-so-vibrant production of Bill Stevenson and Stephen Egerton (Descendents/ALL). This dynamic duo produced the 1995 release Save It (Wishingwell) after being ALL but bedazzled by two EPs,Dude Danger (Sunspot) and Neon (Skene). Shades Apart has shared a stage with ALL and the Descendents, which now ranks as my number two I-wish-it-was-me-and-I’m-pissed attitude spawner, behind Bill Ham (and many others I do not and do not want to know) getting to see a pre-Alternative Tentacles NOMEANSNO open up for Hüsker Dü. Bill, you fucker. And fuck all the rest of you, too.

Seeing Things draws the sword on love/hate power pop and skewers the bitch. Much more mellow than the 200+ beats per minute Save It, the album shows a maturity and richness found only in nursing homes, Hong Kong, and Southern Illinois field soil (I’ll be fired for that one). The production, needless to say, is on high attack, shimmering, a straight-on punch in the face. Speaking of face, if you’ve heard the magical production of the last Face to Face album, you’re in the right place. I stress this dimension because the day when bands could schlitz on the recording budget because it’s really “the songs that make the album” are over, and vice versa for that matter (see: Death Never Sounded So Good).

Seeing Things is a good and proper rendition of two union boys duking it out in a bar after standing around looking at each other all day (fuck you, Local 170). And speaking of renditions, if you have the technical capacity and want to hear Shades Apart dissever “Tainted Love,” check this out: http:// www.nj.com/arts/music/njbands/shadesapart/index.html