You Know What to Do

Album review

With their 2012 album Whiteout!, Pacific Northwestern garage rockers the Shivas offered up a rich variety of tunes that wandered between Nuggets-esque garage rave-ups, jangly folk, blown-out surf rock, and psychedelic pop. The album, their third overall but first for venerable indie label K Records, had a hefty layer of fuzz on it, but the production, handled by Brian Jonestown Massacre member Collin Hegna, felt almost a little too polished for a band so raw. The 2014 follow-up You Know What to Do takes a step toward more backwards-looking means of production and songwriting alike, sounding like it was plucked directly from a dusty crate of forgotten garage records from the mid-'60s. Recording this time around took place in K studios with label founder Calvin Johnson at the mixing board, and the vintage mikes and straight-to-tape sounds of the studio suit the Shivas' sound perfectly, adding an electric crackle to their already unhinged sound. More than production, this album yields some of the band's best songs and performances. The punky side of the band that shone through so much on Whiteout! has been replaced somewhat with more inventive guitar interplay. Whether it's the interlocking surf spookiness of the palate-cleansing instrumental "Do the Crocodile" or the fluttery arpeggios of the early rock-influenced "Used to Being Cool," guitarists Jared Molyneux and Rob Mannering never let the pace of the album drop below fever pitch, even when the band is running through relatively laid-back tracks like the R&B groover "And On." The bright handclaps and soul-tinged melody of standout track "You Make Me Wanna Die" see the Shivas stretching into even more melodic and catchy territory than the poppiest moments of their last album, and diversions into mellow surf balladry ("Beach Heads") and gauzy, harmony-heavy psychedelia ("Let It Happen to You") offer a wider variety of '60s-influenced sounds than the mostly amped-up garage rippers of their earlier recordings. The variant songs flow together well, and You Know What to Do comes across as a confident statement of excitement and stylistic experimentation up there with the best garage revivalists of all eras.

© Fred Thomas /TiVo