Good Shade

Playing hooky, buoyant pop melodies with plenty of chugging guitar and the speed and impact of punk rock, Good Shade is a vehicle for the songs of tunesmith and multi-instrumentalist Shane Natalie. In the studio, Natalie is a one-man band who plays all the instruments and handles all the vocals himself, while for live shows he has a rotating circle of musicians who accompany him. A Columbus, Ohio native, Natalie had been a busy veteran of the local music scene before launching Good Shade in the '10s, and he sounded more punk than pop on Good Shade's self-titled debut in 2014. The wiry but catchy sound of Natalie's music gained more stylistic layers on 2015's Breakfast and 2017's Lunch, adding more polish and putting greater emphasis on the tuneful side of his music, and 2019's Way Out pushed that side of the music farther ahead than ever before. Shane Natalie had been a presence on the Columbus punk and indie scene well before he launched Good Shade. Natalie got his first guitar from his parents when he was eight years old, and when he was 14, he received a drum kit for Christmas. He joined his first band in 2006, Seditious Libel, and he began playing drums with Lose the Tude in 2007. He went on to work with several other Columbus area acts, including Tight Bros, noiseblanket, and Present Sleep Fleet, and toured with the Sidekicks as a fill-in guitarist in 2012. Natalie began writing and recording material as Good Shade in 2013 during downtime from his other projects, and the following year, he dropped his first Good Shade album, which he released on his own Gut Genug label. In December 2015, the second Good Shade album arrived (Breakfast), and fittingly Lunch followed in July 2017. As word about Good Shade spread, the well-established punk label Dirtnap Records struck a deal with Natalie for their next LP, and the fourth Good Shade album, Way Out, was released in February 2019.
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