#169
1980 Housekeeping LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
The Shivvers
The Shivvers
Genre: Power Pop
4.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Please Stand By
Hold On
When I Was Younger
No Substitute
This album presents as a dilemma. It was recorded in 1980. Shelved and then finally released in 2014. If we got to 2014 it would be irrelevant except as a curio release. Including it in 1980 flies in the face of the mission statement, which is to go back to an era and “see what we missed”. Well, we couldn’t miss this because it wasn’t released.
Argh.
I decided to go ahead with listening and rating it.
And I’m glad I did. It reminds me, from the outset, of another unheralded curiosity from 20 years later, Teen Machine’s After School Special. A dynamite collection of power pop fronted by actress Amanda Foreman and filmmaker Cody Jarrett, with “Hot Mom”, a bubblegum gem that predates “Stacey’s Mom” about the exact same topic but told from the point of view of the daughter of the Hot Mom. Damn, that’s a great album.
This is like the precursor to that one. Fronted by Jill Kossoris, this is snappy Power Pop that calls to mind The Raspberries more than the skinny tie genre that it morphed into by the time of this release. So it really has no place in time.
If you are hungry for that genre, this album will reward you with each track, none too cute (like Teen Machine) but also, none too cloying (see Eric Carmen’s solo work). This is softer Runaways (“When I Was Younger”), what Blondie might have sounded like if they wanted more “roll” in their “rock”.
The time for this album was ripe. With The Go-Gos and Blondie and Pretenders and the Bangles and Lone Justice all making waves at this time, a female led New Wave Power Pop band should have been big. Or at least had one or two hits to get on a compilation.
There is a guitar solo on “Life Without You” that rivals some of the best of the era.
In a generous mood I would give this a “5” but I’ve been taken to task for my weird (and sometimes driven by gut) rating system. Had there had been one super catchy hit on this thing (ala The Jags’ “Back of My Hand”) I could justify it. But it’s just a solid collection of would-be-hits of a bygone era. I would be proud to cover any of them if my (sometimes) Power Pop band was still around.
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