Feels So Good // Feels So Bad Limited Vinyl LP

The Shivas Feels So Good // Feels So Bad Limited Vinyl LP

Overview:

As bandmates who are also in a long-term relationship, Molyneux and Leonard know that their songs might be seen as glimpses into their personal lives, but their songwriting is rarely autobiography. Leonard compares their process to something more akin to screenwriting.

“There’s bound to be some autobiographical material in there,” she says. “But the common denominator is the exploration of universal feelings: ones that everyone experiences or can relate to.”

The goal is to use the music to drill down into something genuine and sincere, beyond genre or stylistic affectation. That’s where The Shivas have arrived. Whatever growth led the band to Feels So Good // Feels So Bad, plenty of their fascinations remain. They’re still turning love songs into psychedelic, transcendent epics. “Tell Me That You Love Me” subverts doo-wop extravagance and dabbles in Flamenco rhythms.

“Rock Me Baby” is a bubblegum anthem soaked in so much reverb that we might just be hearing it from the stadium nosebleeds. “Sometimes” is almost impossibly huge, like a witchy outtake from the Brill Building era. Those songs feel like logical expansions from a band that has always excelled at a timeless sort of rock and roll that tinkers with and explodes elements from every era.

But on the towering and mournful “You Wanna Be My Man,” a slow-burning six-minute shoegaze prayer for a higher sort of love, there is a level of emotional nuance that feels like something altogether revolutionary. It’s there again in the stripped-down vulnerability of the album-closing elegy “Please Don’t Go.” Yes, Feels So Good // Feels So Bad is an album about acceptance. Sometimes that acceptance feels enlightened and sometimes it feels like the end result of a lot of kicking and screaming.

The Shivas have adapted in both of those ways. With new tours scheduled and a new album on the way, they’re still hoping--like all of us--for a new era of vibrant, cathartic live music. The lessons they learned from having their normal upended, though, have only helped them grow

Featured Tracks:

1. Feels So Bad 04:11
2. Undone 04:53
3. Tell Me That You Love Me 03:51
4. If I Could Choose 03:09
5. Don't Go 01:41
6. My Baby Don't 03:36
7. You Wanna Be My Man 05:56
8. A Gift 00:40
9. For The Kids 02:51
10. Rock Me Baby 03:15
11. So Cold 03:31
12. Sometimes 04:19
13. Please Don't Go 02:01