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Shalini
The Surface and the Stars
Electric Devil Records
If you grew up on a steady diet of albums by R.E.M., Let’s Active, Marshall Crenshaw and Game Theory, then you must miss the jangle. That Byrdsy swoon, that steady jingle, that flowing 12-string figure that rolls across your heart, has pretty much gone missing in the last two decades, and to put it in blunt terms, the world is lesser for it. Gone seem to be the days of Reckoning or Field Day, where the Rickenbacker jangled away and the songs came from behind and rushed over the arrangements in lush, gasp-worthy bursts. But on her fourth album The Surface and the Stars, singer/songwriter Shalini may very well be signaling that there’s a sea change afoot and the jangle might be on its way back. Enlisting Mitch Easter to produce—and he’s the natural choice as he’s the man who commandeered the production on some of the most classic janglepop albums of the last three decades as well as fronting Let’s Active—Shalini leans into Easter’s production with a flowing confidence. The former leader of San Francisco’s Vinyl Devotion, Shalini knows her way around a rock and roll song. “Gloria In Transit” is a punchy blast of pop; “Need To Be” is a tambourine-infused gem; and “Where Are We?” comes with a horny little Stonesy swagger. Elsewhere, the dreamy glow of” Self Sorting U” comes courtesy of Shalini’s stunning falsetto and some well-placed egg shaker and bells and the closer “Magenta Rules” is a breezy rocker that has much muscle as it does finesse. The Surface and the Stars is an album of crunchy elegance—an eleven-song outing rich in both preternatural pop smarts and sheer velocity.
—Alex Green
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