3 out of 5

Label: DeSoto Records

Produced by: J. Robbins

The comparatively long-gestating Starless got a quick followup with Shiner’s final – for their first phase – album, The Egg, which serves as a perfect symbol of the band kind of finally “maturing” to a state where they were ready to hatch and leave the nest. (Only to return later on as eldsters, proving all they’d learned.)

This state naturally brings with it a lot of energy and excitement: it’s true to say that the melding of Shiner’s mathy hardcore and later emo-pop leanings have rarely been blended in exactly the same degrees as on The Egg, especially surprising upon release but enduring in its uniqueness even decades on. At the same time, just as Starless was perhaps equivalent to a teenager’s melting pot of traits, kind of uncomfortably shoved together, The Egg is a cute lil’ post-college 20something, certainly more assured and adulting and just a wee bit wizened, but maybe trying too hard to be those things as well. And so: while Paul Malinoswski’s bass snakes expertly through the rhythms, and J. Robbins’ production makes the guitars shimmer and the drums absolutely kick, and the band in general has a much better grasp on integrating synths and keys vs. Starless, the album also reeks of some of the rather forced sincerity that was being brought into indie rock at the time, which is a long-winded way of describing this as pretty damned emo at points. Allen Epley is really reaching for some notes he can’t quite make; there’s an acoustic closer; we’re a few steps away from Dashboard Confessional on one end, or Thursday on the other. That really was the sound at the time, so it makes sense, especially when tapping a know quantity like Robbins to be at the boards.

And the album can be pretty uneven as a result. Even intra-song, the meaty-ass riffs that open up the album – The Truth About Cows, Surgery – tend to get cut off by “pretty” bridges, and a tune like The Simple Truth is really pushing for something during its 7-minute runtime that it’s a bit too precious to achieve.

That said, Shiner was all-in on this sound in a way that comes across as sincere, and so it sits unashamedly side by side with some of their best sounding material (thanks, J.!) and most memorable and heavy-hitting melodies. The Egg is a weird experience to listen to: I rock out to it and cringe at it equally, marveling at how seamlessly those two reactions follow one another. And then obviously if you are a fan of that emo rock from the time, you can remove the cringe and just revel in some expert genre mixing.