Shannon Wright “In Film Sound”
This is the album that I’ve been waiting for years to hear. Not that I’ve been waiting for this to particularly to come out in the “Hurry up, Shannon!” way, but rather that I’ve been waiting far too long to be able to say this about an album.
When reviewing music, especially when there are female vocals involved, the review immediately comes to a screaming halt. For every female musician you can name out there to draw comparisons to, it seems like you could probably just as easily name a hundred men that are perhaps even sometimes more recognizable names.
I fully believe that music is shifting. I believe we are moving from a time when there is such a thing as “male music” and “female music”, probably because for such a long time “female music” had been given the stigma of only being listened to by, well, females. More and more men are listening to bands fronted by women (Thanks, Paramore… I guess?) whilst more and more female fronted music in general is appearing on the radio and just in general to combat what at one point in time (And quite possible still is) a male dominated industry.
But that is all something I can explore at a later time.
The point is that this album just flat out rocks. Can I pinpoint it to a particular sound? No. Musically it has elements of Tool at times (Yes, Tool) Sometimes I can hear bands that you know like Dead Sara to make a comparison to, but in no ways is this ripping off Dead Sara. And I almost want to say that this sounds like a better version of Hole, but not all of Hole’s musical is terrible. Courtney Love did manage to somehow make a few good songs and this reminds me of those and less of the topless, crazy Courtney Love who is probably only being name dropped in this review because she killed her husband.
What I love about this album- and what you should love about this album- is that you have to take every preconceived notion that you have about female music and just put it into a glass box. All of the “This sounds like Alanis mixed with Garbage” or “This is just ripping off Blondie” ideas, just take them all and put them into a glass box. Okay, you did that. Now, what this album is going to do to that glass box is smash it into a million little pieces to the point where they just disappear and you don’t even have to clean up any mess.
The way you listen to music will never be the same again.
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