Shalants / S/t

American Dust

Shalants produce a distinctly Californian sound: a mash-up of Mexican, Native American, Chinese, settler culture and pioneer spirits. The Northern California four-piece splits their time between San Francisco and the alpine wilderness of Shasta County, and their music is informed by everything between the Delta and the Bay. They recall a bygone era, but their music is not retro, and their new, self-titled album is a tour de force and a statement of purpose. Miller Carr, Shalants’ chief singer and songwriter, is descended from the original pioneers who founded San Francisco and the Jefferson State area. His family were gold rush chancers, his great-grandfather a county judge, his grandfather a District Attorney, and his father a liberal free-spirited lawyer turned brandy-drinking river rat. The songs on Shalants trace Carr’s own lineage and his bloodline’s collected experience: from sailors and explorers to prospectors and religious asylum seekers; immigrants and ballroom piano players to whores and gunslingers; opium smokers and bohemians to anarchists and the beats; John Muir, Gary Snyder, Kerouac and Emperor Norton. The band draws inspiration from California’s terrain and topography. Their darkness emerges from the fog and the forests, and their playfulness and curiosity from the giants in the Shasta Cascades, their friends in the Sierras and the rivers and meadows that wind around the canyons. But ultimately what makes the band so intriguing, whether it be by their live show or recorded work, is their subtle dynamics, voodoo telepathy and warlike approach to performing. They will cut you down, but they’ll also bury you afterward, and make a little cross. Shalants’ highlights include the dub-influenced, lyrically dense “Riverbanking,” the urgent propulsive plea of “When It Comes,” the swinging, shimmering voodoo of “The Mercury Twins,” the forlorn waltz of “Black Jewels” and the gentle melancholy of “The Deserter.” It’s an album-length dose of mania and wonder via a cocktail of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Walkmen, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.  “… as sharp and clever as a John Coltrane cut yet as sleazy and intense as the Velvet Underground at their best. It is unsettling, eerie and yet strangely welcoming.” —Incendiarymag.com  “This is music for heat waves and minor floods, or at least for the kinds of small, crowded venues where the walls are beaded with sweat and the singer can barely be seen through a haze of humidity and cigarette smoke.” —Popsheep

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