Nothing about this album suggests that it’s a debut. Shaking Hand’s eponymous introductory shot is so assured it sounds as if an awful lot of groundwork has preceded its appearance. As it happens – beyond live shows – the only thing paving the way was a single issued last June.
Shaking Hand are a Manchester trio: Ellis Hodgkiss (bass), Freddie Hunter (drums) and George Hunter (guitar, vocals). They deal in a guitar-centred art-rock with touches of Slint and Tortoise, and a muted math-rock feel. There are also hints of Field Music around the time of their 2010 Measure album and a muzzy, out-of focus psychedelic sense of distance – the latter trait emphasised by George Hunter’s distracted, this-close-to-flat singing style and the hard-to-parse lyrics (sample: “Bury me I’m rotten I was in it for the pardon, I was leaking out the barrel before they filled it up again”).
Throughout the seven tracks and 42 minutes, there’s a formal precision: circling guitar figures, bass lines which walk up and down the fret board and pitter-patter drums. Rather than being about melody – and there are melodies: the dreamy “Night Owl” has a lullaby quality – the album is concerned with texture and the interplay between each element the band brings to bear. Sometimes, there are dives into a more linear rock: the descending, Sonic Youth-like (c Daydream Nation) block chords defining the middle of “Mantras”; the hammering, yet still low-key, rhythms of “Up the Ante(lope)”; the guitar mangling towards the end of “Italics.”
Compelling stuff, and it’s clear Shaking Hand have put a lot of thought into their debut album. The forethought is underlined by a self-declared influence drawn from modernist architecture – the album’s cover image is of an unrealised 1970s development proposed for Los Angeles which was to incorporate what were described by architect Ray Kappe as “People Movers.”
It’s early to advocate for this as one of the albums of the year, but it feels like a keeper. A band to watch, and if they’re this persuasive live Shaking Hand will confirm they’re the real deal.
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