3 out of 5

Label: DeSoto Records

Produced by: Bob Weston

My music-fan narrative contains a time where I was a straight up hater of things I deemed not cool, and that deeming was done via a rather wide umbrella-shaded grouping of subgenres. Any easy target: anything that pinged off of ’emo.’ This stretched back into things I already had in my collection, like Sunny Day Real Estate, and then tendriled out towards anything within a few steps removed from whomever I deemed the major offenders. Thank goodness the internet wasn’t as robust and easily accessible then as it was now, because I’m pretty sure I could’ve connected everything I listen to to, like Bright Eyes, if I’d wanted to.

Shiner got lumped into this grouping for various reasons, having shared a stage with Sunny Day; being on Jawbox’s label – an emo tangential group, from my perspective – and reportedly having a sound (because god knows I hadn’t actually listened to them myself) that fit the made-up classifications of faux-literate lyrics and crunchy rock that was scared to really rock out.

I arguably haven’t evolved much with my tastes, but have maybe developed more mature four-letter words to use when criticizing things. Additionally, I’ve gotten more precise when defining “the rules:” maybe I classify a band one way during a certain era, and another way in another era. It should be easy to do this with Shiner – I really like The Life and Times, Shiner lead Allen Epley’s follow-up act; simple to draw a line between then and now. …Except that I kind of had to face that LaT had a lot of Shiner DNA in the slo-core rocking. A rerelease of all of Shiner’s older material alongside a 2020 album provided a good reason to consider rewriting my rules regarding the band.

Listening to Splay, their debut, it’s clear that the music version of not judging a book by its cover applies: Shiner was a pretty confused band at this point, certainly taking from some of those same sources as Sunny Day and Jawbox and the like, but also heavily indebted to a rawer, grungier style. The album is not scared to rock, and as I’d discover with The Life and Times, while Epley’s somewhat vague lyrics can cover emo-adjacent territory, his approach is more illustrative than emotionally evocative – which can leave me a bit disconnected, but creates an interesting divide between the passion of his singing and the content, a dynamic I appreciate from afar. Youth makes some of those particular illustrations a bit forced on Splay, and certainly closer to standard relationship and authority topics, but that divide is still there, as-is Epley’s somewhat open-ended, yearning, singing style – like he’s hopeful, but confused about it.

But back to the music: with production and mixing from Bob Weston, Splay has heft: the glittery guitars of emo are instead washed and scrubbed with steel wool, but given the roomy recording of a seasoned vet who knew this sound needed some volume. The confusion I reference above is a bit of a hindrance, though, as you can hear the Shiner sound really strong in the forefront – a big sound, melodically catchy without having direct riffs – but the group occasionally retreats back to some grunge / metal moments that kind of date things, very much recalling the process Far went through across its first two albums. Match this with the aforementioned youthfulness of Epley’s storytelling, and the whole production gets a bit wishy-washy: are they an emotions-first band; are they DC punk rockers; are they Chicago / NY sludge…

Shiner were something else, for sure, and I’m glad I’m having the opportunity to experience that, finally. They may not have started with a clear vision of what that “something else” would be, of course, but I think even old me, had he been smart enough to tune in, would’ve been pretty floored by the clunky combo of sounds.