Shannon and the Clams - The new monsters

The day they first met, they were all still students at the California College of the Arts in Oakland: the buxom Shannon Shaw, a gawky, platinum-blonde Etta James with a powerful contralto, playing a Danelectro bass for fun with a certain fury, and a Dusty Springfield devotional card tucked in her Teddy's breast pocket; singer and guitarist Cody Blanchard – King Lollipop to his friends – with the goofy look of a hillbilly freak and unconditional devotion to the ghost of Buddy Holly; and Ian Amberson, drummer and percussionist with a slightly unhinged air, evidently the missing piece needed to complete the puzzle and form a band. What they shared, among other things, was a passion for plenty of music long fallen out of favor, but also for the wildest kitsch of the American pop imagination: on one hand the dusty mythology of doo-wop, primordial rock'n'roll, the codified theatricality and glitter of girl-groups, as well as the catchy-tune ecstasy of the surf-rock epic that has forcefully returned to the fore over the last five years; on the other, the mannered aesthetic from before the great dream shattered forever, that of American Graffiti (or of "The Last Picture Show" for cinephiles who prefer the less idealistic, more twilight-toned version) and of glittering vintage Americana in general. An all-in-all eccentrically varied set of influences beyond measure, blended and served up moreover with a sensibility closer to Eighties punk and Nineties lice-ridden garage, Mummies first and foremost.

A first single for the unknown Weird Hug, a string of shows all over the Bay Area, and the newly christened Shannon And The Clams crew is already due for its debut. The stroke of luck, in this sense, takes the lanky shape of Matthew Melton, a Memphis rocker transplanted to Oakland, who had already notched up a few satisfactions at the helm of Snake Flowers II and had just launched what would soon prove to be the most fortunate of his creations, Bare Wires. He's the first to offer himself as producer to the eccentric trio, and he's the one, already an amateur photographer for Jay Reatard, who takes the shot that will end up on the cover of the debut album, out via 1-2-3-4 Go! just a few months later.

The Bay Area's Little Neck Clams

I Wanna Go Home has the merit of opening with a potential hit, an exuberant track that's in some ways paradigmatic of the trendiest strand of Californian alternative music. It's called "Troublemaker". The sound is essentially grimy, a crackling, heavily reverbed surf-rock drowned in pools of low (if not downright abysmal) fidelity. Behind the desk, Melton proves really good at capturing the genuine spirit of a band still charmingly uncontaminated and naive, noisy just the right amount. Beyond that too, the choices made remain enjoyable, and this first, racket-making incarnation of the Clams opts for a rehash of the Trashmen's canon, if anything leaning even further into farce and garage-rock mayhem.

In "You Can Come Over" and "Cry Aye Aye Aye" one can detect the first traces of swooniness from a Shannon still rough around the edges in her wide-ranging forays into early pop-rock mythology. The band's tattered romanticism thus finds its embryonic raison d'être here, even if the singer's voice still appears heavily limited by a strategy that favors her in the abrasive guise of a screamer. Approximation, after all, in the years of the explosion of lice-ridden labels like Woodsist, is a rather functional device for getting one's message across.

The incendiary boogie of "Scuffle With The Clams" attests to the Californians' primitivist credentials, with Shaw tending not to stray from the punkette role she already plays alongside her friend Seth Bogart in the raucous Hunx & His Punx venture. The same goes for "Blast Me To Bermuda", an even cheaper, filthy garage-punk rant (with the blonde playing the part of the reckless brat), while even rudimentary post-hardcore hints peek through the folds of "Cat Party", a scorching number in terms of impact but pretty thin on noteworthy ideas. For now, at any rate, the Oakland kids are doing just fine as they are, compelling if not especially original. In other respects, I Wanna Go Home also comes across as a kind of dress rehearsal for what's to come: shaggy, full of rough edges, but already infatuated with vintage formulas and a roaring revivalism. The main exception is "Surrounded By Ghosts", whose ghosts are nothing more than the remnants of a buried musical epic, albeit one with undying charms. No less emblematic, "Waiting For You" aptly represents, in potential, the trio's irresistible seed, with Blanchard's feminine little voice the first to venture into territories soon to be permanently inhabited, with far greater authority, by his female counterpart. She indeed follows close behind him on the title track as well as on the wonderful "When You're On", and her rough sweetness certainly doesn't leave one indifferent. The enchantment thus breaks through like a timid ray of sunshine, and already offers up its magical warmth.

What emerges, then, is a stimulating but unbalanced debut, unsure of which direction to take. Luckily it won't take long – just a few months – before the band makes the right choice. The four tracks on the Hunk Hunt EP already represent a significant step forward: improved songwriting and melodic flair, a fierier personality, generally more polished recordings, all without sacrificing that studied aura of scruffiness. The new standard leans toward a driving, stomping power-pop, with the group repeatedly giving the impression of having fun above all else, between cocky swagger and successful multi-voiced anthemic romps (the title track). "Would You Love Me If I Was Dead" is the first marriage of eros and thanatos celebrated by the Clams, an adorable torch song sung by Cody in a femme-fatale falsetto, and it leaves the impression of potential still partly untapped. Shannon and her bandmates' broken heart is young and, at the same time, older than sixty years. "Heart Break" states it clearly, laying down the terms of a promise that is as ecstatic as it is aesthetic: from here on out, the Oakland band will never be the same again.

For about a year the guys steer clear of the recording studio and take their unorthodox garage sound around the States. Their shows – where, among other things, they sell the Cd-r miscellany Scuffle With The Clams – draw plenty of attention, even outside their narrow niche, thanks to their generosity on stage and an assortment of eccentricities. Many describe their gigs as among the most hilarious and gripping in ages, so the name starts to spread, and it doesn't escape the attention of the Burger Records crew, who will distribute the cassette version of the debut and book them among the headliners of the live showcases organized in the following years alongside the cream of the Californian scene (and beyond), Burgerama and Burger Boogaloo.

At the end of 2010, then, comes a second EP, Shannon And The Clams… Ruin Christmas. Four new tracks, an eloquent title: the trio "ruins Christmas" by reinterpreting it in their own way, between an enjoyable twangy delicacy with a Hawaiian flavor ("Melekalikimaka"), a chloroformed rereading of Elvis Presley ("Blue Christmas") and a deliberately doggish take on the most unabashedly populist Mariah Carey song of all ("All I Want For Christmas Is You"). Rounding out the picture is a dive into the sunshine-pop syrup of "Fat Daddy", all trinkets and old-TV-jingle charm, in the spirit of the compilation curated by cult director John Waters just six years earlier.

The Cult Band

After thoroughly indulging in all sorts of side snacks, April 2011 brings the Oakland outfit's sophomore moment. But it's not just the album, titled Sleep Talk, that comes out, because it's above all the voluptuous Shannon Shaw's remarkable contralto that finally gets its due, earning her what amounts to first prize for the most improbable breakout singer in the whole alternative scene.

The blonde outclasses a less-than-formidable field of competitors and offers a small audience of outcasts the most convincing tribute to being different in quite some time. To pull it off, she has to don the grotesque garb of the incurable nostalgic, endlessly stirring the bubbling cauldron of American pop tradition to expose its tricks, hypocrisies and phony morality. Searching for the perfect refrain to crown the triumph of lifelong losers, she displays a candid romanticism, mimetic in form and biting in substance, an ideal amplifier for the longing for vindication felt by a whole lineage of artists forever relegated to the shadow of success. The trio's stance is all the more sincere and powerful for being guided by naive primitivism and an irrepressible, corrosive freak attitude, punctuated by the wild, hypnotic pulse of a mantra ("One of us! One of us!") borrowed from one of cinema history's cursed masterpieces, now more than ever a claim to a sense of belonging and identity necessarily forged in conflict.

Shannon and the Clams' second proper album is, however, far more than a simple homage to Tod Browning and his unforgettable platoon of nature's jokes. It's a sumptuous accumulation of more or less learned references, kitsch short-circuits and gaudy nods to the dusty back room of American Oldies but Goodies culture, all skillfully assembled under an irreverent subtext. There's no shame in looking ugly, dirty or mean when that's the only face you have to show, at least to those who don't deserve any better. Political correctness is a humiliating as well as useless courtesy in a persistent climate of Judas-like do-goodery, and every compromise can be sent packing except the one that binds sweetness and roughness in an irresistible liaison: it can't be easy to sound crude and refined at the same time, smoothing over the imbalances of the whole recovery operation with the moving grit of someone who insists on living among the pages of a faded old photo album.

With "Baby Don't Do It" and "You Will Always Bring Me Flowers" things kick off under the banner of a rigorous rediscovery of doo-wop and girl groups, but that's only the first of a long series of cunning expressive illusions. The delicate embroidery of the pin-up girls' cardigans is soon corrupted by the unruly rockabilly trimmings of Cody Blanchard's electric guitar, while the table is set with every kind of soul, R&B or proto-twee excess, with oddities worthy of a junk-shop clearance sale (the little calypso guitar and congas of "Oh Louie") while the beat hands down its blessing from on high like a good and merciful God. "Sleep Talk" is a wickedly good garage-revival record for connoisseurs: forceful, infectious, moving in its purity and in the rightness of its vintage sensibility, irredeemably out of fashion in a way that only King Khan and Mark Sultan seem capable of being today.

Even melancholy is a classy vintage accessory in the shop window of these skilled American forgers: there's no other way to explain surf-pop crests revisited down to the root with the determination of uncompromising purists, with no watered-down urge to contaminate things with the present. The only truly original element is that disheveled, unspoiled, playful and always slightly unsettling nature that makes Shannon & The Clams the psychotic, indignant version of the Shangri-Las, a satisfying new lifeblood for a collection of styles otherwise headed for the oblivion of pure academicism. Even in their most bristly, rebellious variant, the curvaceous frontwoman and her cohorts never betray the artifice behind the smallest detail, proving to be frugal when it comes to frills, going so far as to reveal, on the emblematic "Toxic Revenge", their ideal family tree somewhere between Ramones and Ronettes (the name Ramonettes would perhaps have made things too easy), before the boozy fumes of a no-wave delirium worthy of the Bride of No-No.

As with many other apostles of the genre, attention to detail leaves nothing to chance, not a single riff, not a single watt. On Sleep Talk this precision yields a truly astonishing result in the analog sound, a solemn high mass of reverb, a gem that short-sighted critics might foolishly file away as mere lo-fi and move on, doing the record the unbearable disservice of lumping it in with the flea-bitten neo-surf scene on the California circuit. Shannon's performance as a vocalist alone deserves extra credit, thrilling in the way she breathes real life into the impeccable papier-mâché backdrops of the filologically correct. A gallery of virtuosic touches that are never precious, yet would amount to little more than good intentions without that estranging edge, that roguish weirdness, the sinister atmospheres that soak through the album's twelve tracks like a sponge. The same magical dread of the end-of-year dance to the strains of "Love Among The Stars", with the surprise trap this time set by the new prom queen Carrie herself, in her extra-large version, impatient to be drenched in blood the very instant of her coronation.

Fairy tales that fade into nightmares, fluttering harmonies that turn spectral, poisonous hearts tucked inside the shell of a handful of old sweets, so innocent in their gold and silver foil wrapping. In songs like "The Woodsman" the full delight of the bogeyman shines through. The pristine-dream fifties come back to life, reread through the tainted innocence of the Sixties' teen tragedy ballad and the Seventies' death rock, four simply stunning minutes. And above all, the acid colors of that same dream, now warped by time, on film condemned to an eternity growing ever more rancid in the belly of an aging Kodak. Shannon's voice tells, like no other, the languid, sickly, murky and fierce mood of someone who has resigned herself to the seductions of her own monstrousness: over the top but authentic, dignified, tragic rather than caricatured, as anguished as Liz Taylor racked by the boundless pain of beauty wearing thin.

A Promise Deferred

One way or another, Shannon Shaw's name becomes one of the most talked-about among fans of the Californian scene that has recently propelled Ty Segall (and his crew) to success as its golden boy and standard-bearer. Cody treats himself to a solo debut under the battle moniker King Lollipop (the delightful "Woodland Whoopee Songs Of Ol' Callowhee", again out on 1-2-3-4 Go!) but it's little more than a pastime, a bit like the Togas cover band that in 2012 sees the frontwoman teaming up with none other than Ty Segall, Philip Sambol (Strange Boys) and Lance Willie (Reigning Sound), for a handful of off-the-cuff shows complete with "Animal House"-style togas and covers of the Kingsmen, Undertones, Kinks, Del Shannon and Beatles.

The prospect of a new, promising breakthrough and the move to Hardly Art, the Sub Pop subsidiary with Carissa's Wierd, Gem Club and Protomartyr on its roster, raise considerable anticipation for the third chapter from what may be the most cultured and ramshackle band of the bunch (on a par, by now, with the formidable duo King Khan & BBQ Show), so miraculously alive and relevant in its original take on otherwise dead-and-buried formulas. Some of the credit goes to the lead single "Ozma", which aptly confirms that, behind the scenery of the surf-beat epic, there beats a heart that is young and plenty restless. On Dreams In The Rat House, Shannon and The Clams' expressive range confirms, within their narrow field of reference, all the eclecticism the band is capable of, ranging from the earthy rockabilly vitality and grimy girl-group energy of "Hey Willy" to the doo-wop ghosts used as battering rams in the swoony sixties spell of "Heads or Tails", not to mention the unmistakable fifties innocence the buxom singer repeatedly whips out as if it were her own personal security blanket.

In a genre where the racket and grime guaranteed by fuzzboxes often make all the difference, unique qualities like theirs can only sound like a genuine blessing, raising both the bar of what's on offer and the expectations of those who don't hide their appreciation. Shining brightly once again is the superlative romanticism delivered by Shaw as an all-heart performer, tough yet delicate, who never lingers on hollow poses and wins over her admirers through the strength of a feeling always kept safe from the easy temptations of sentimentality. Further raising an already more-than-respectable bar is the versatility of Shannon's astonishing contralto – powerful and surprisingly tender, mesmerizing and capable of tremendous emotional depth – a true key instrument in the band's already impressive arsenal.

No less crucial to the Clams' distinctiveness is Cody Blanchard's nimble guitar work, a sensational jangle miniaturist, while rounding out the picture is a sonic fidelity even lower than the Oakland group's usual standard, essential for lending that patina of rough-hewn approximation which is the perfect mask for such skillful sophisticates of quotation as they are. It's precisely that heavily reverbed, slightly acidic bed, together with the prodigious mimicry practiced against a backdrop of long-forgotten pop-song clichés, that produces that strange crust of charm gone slightly rancid which has made the Californian band's sound so truly special.

Moments like "The Rat House" see Shannon and the Clams unleash all their scoundrel-like weirdness along with an irreverent, nonsensical lunacy and a primal punk attitude. Herein lies the purity of their garage sound, hopelessly out of time and necessarily out of fashion: it's the simmering, underground atmosphere that runs through their bizarre explorations like a sick but genuine fervor, helping give substance and vigor to the impeccable guitar architecture of the philologically correct. There's no shortage ("Bed Rock", the new - less convincing - "The Cult Song") of dark, charging psychobilly primitivism in the style of Cramps. The band thus reveals its darkest soul. It gives vent to a sublime freak temperament without limiting the harmony or coherence of the whole, taking away credibility, in fact, from those who insist on seeing them as a mere bunch of skilled craftsmen lost in the precious flow of their own stylistic exercises. Except for the dispensable filler that closes the album with a duet of roaring vocals, Dreams In The Rat House maintains a consistently commendable level of quality.

Above average is "If I Could Count", memorable for its impressive formal adherence to its reference models and for a backward-looking spirit elevated into a pure badge of identity. No less remarkable, caught between intimacy and nostalgia, is the easy-listening perfection of the chorus of "Unlearn", a killer track of the kind the band has already written several times, a genuine masterpiece in which the balance between emotion and finesse couldn't reach more admirable results. It's in moments like this (the same goes for "The Rabbit's Nose") that it becomes clear how, besides being skilled musicians, Clams are also excellent architects of pop plots, faithful to an aesthetic to the very end, yet always personal and sincere.

After I Wanna Go Home and especially Sleep Talk, it was fair to expect the breakthrough album, the one that would see Shannon and The Clams hit the jackpot the way not only the aforementioned Segall did, but also, to a lesser extent, Mikal Cronin or Thee Oh Sees. That's not quite how it goes, though, because here they seem to be missing just that extra bit of daring the circumstances would have called for. A substantial confirmation that adds nothing unmissable to its predecessors. What remains is the impression of being in the presence of a band of a caliber far above average, especially in a niche where the true aces can be counted on one hand. Shannon and her Clams belong in that category, but for now they don't go beyond pinkie-finger size or, being generous given their undeniable charm, ring-finger size.

Of course, the trio fights its ideal battle on several fronts. In tune with the golden years it pays tribute to with its music, it once again proves to be a formidable 45-rpm machine. Once again it's Burger Records that takes care of collecting the various seven-inches released over the past three years, and by the end of the year a cassette simply titled Singles Collection sees the light, to the delight of completists. Among the highlights are covers of the famous "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane and of a thoroughly battered "Angel Baby" by Rosie & The Originals, both perfect for Shaw's fiery delivery, along with the superb twilight mood of "Jimmy" and the booze-soaked hook of "Paddy's Birthday".

The kings of garage revival

In pop music, as we know, radicalizing one's own expressive habits is an undeniably effective way to build loyalty, but it can wear thin in the long run. The cheerful bunch must have realized this too, since on their latest album, as mentioned, they limited themselves to a grand-scale rehash of the formula already deployed profitably on the excellent Sleep Talk, effectively boxing themselves into a creative dead end and betraying, between the lines, a first hint of mannerism. Still, the physiological dip in the inspiration of the Oakland outfit shouldn't go beyond this specific transitional chapter. Some substantial changes are registered, even if it's hard to think they're enough to account for the fine turn we're about to describe here: Nate Mayhem replaces co-founder Ian Amberson behind the drums, and after a couple of self-released outings, the renewed trio chooses to put their trust in kindred spirit Sonny Smith and James Riotto (previously with Switzerland's Sophie Hunger), a regular guest of John Vanderslice at his Tiny Telephone Studio.

Compared to Dreams In The Rat House, the Californians seem to enjoy a completely different kind of freshness, a new agility too, and overall the stale effect of certain necrophiliac revivalism appears to have been averted.

Instead, what comes through is a genuinely sharp focus on their reference subgenres, keeping both the garage-rock quotient of their sound and their wasted energy to a minimum. The approach has become more minimalist without overturning the band's general coordinates. The passionate boogie of "I Will Miss The Jasmine" confirms the Clams' happy leaning toward Oldies But Goodies and musical nostalgia in general. Their fondness for heartbreak torch songs, for an enchanting and by-now-tattered romanticism, the house specialty, hasn't waned either. Yet another gem in this crown is called "How Long?" and shows the Shaw & Blanchard partnership at its best in reining in the parodic implications of their music while, at the same time, not forcing a dramatic twist or a show of strength at all costs.

Gone By The Dawn benefits from a remarkable sense of restraint, chooses not to overdo it, doesn't make a racket, and remains consistently polished and lively, especially thanks to the contributions of a Cody who's a finer embroiderer than ever ("Baby Blue"), in service of a Shannon who is, as ever, captivating and infectious. The biggest credit due to the full-figured vocalist, on this occasion, lies in not having wanted to overplay her hand, thus allowing the new songs to avoid being crushed or defused by the clichés that animate them. The emblem of this new balance is the single "Corvette", refined and tightly controlled for a band that has always been devoted to a particularly drunken Dionysian spirit. But on this record, pretty much all excess is banned on principle: style and performance clearly benefit, and the same goes for songwriting that is, at last, limpid.

The dialogues between the singer's sensational contralto and the jangly miniatures of Cody Blanchard's guitar lead to new memorable pages such as "My Man", a more-than-fitting occasion to dust off the teen tragedy ballad formula that made certain passages on Sleep Talk so magical. The blonde frontwoman seems no less sensual on a title track that presents her as tender as she's rarely been. "Telling Myself" brings her lovely pout back to the fore, with a kind of ideal doo-wop cover of the Zombies, while "The Bog" is a playful, martial episode, flawless in sublimating the very idea of obsession within these artists' imagination. The aftertaste, inevitably, remains bittersweet.

Perhaps the standout knockout track is missing, all to the benefit of overall cohesion, but It's Too Late still has all the hallmarks of an instant classic, perhaps also because of the ease with which it reworks stylistic devices that are by now set in stone ("Let's Twist Again" resonates as something more than a mere mirage).

In recent years, potential disciples (if not outright imitators) have started making themselves heard, chief among them Sallie Ford, who certainly doesn't lack melody or verve. Even for her, though, Shannon's love of the past and purity remain out of reach, especially on the livelier numbers like "Knock 'em Dead", where the comparison inevitably becomes more exposed. When she digs up the grubby little dress of the Hunx And His Punx project, our heroine shines again as a garage-punk starlet, patron saint of unrepentant primitivists. This happens in the closing stretches, where the reins loosen bit by bit, the goliardic spirit of the so-called Blanchard motion takes over, and the band dresses up as Barbaras, only less florid and decidedly more slacker ("The Burl", a telling title). Before long, the beloved ghosts of the fifties and early sixties resurface, in a closing stretch that mocks melancholy itself and turns into the rousing celebration of an epic that simply refuses to stay buried.

Without fear of contradiction, Gone By The Dawn tops the genre's list for 2015, tied with King Khan & BBQ Show. A mediocre year, cynics might point out, but what really matters is finding, in full form, a band of absolute phenomenons.

And three years later, here they are again! Let's clear this up right away, to avoid any misunderstanding, and without even incidentally addressing the usual detractors of overly citational garage rock: the Shannon & The Clams crew have never created anything more dazzling than their new collection of songs, Onion, nor has their full-figured bandleader ever proven a more miraculous interpreter than she appears today. One could debate how much credit should go to the new producer, a certain Dan Auerbach, who was eager to bring them into his newly-founded Easy Eye Sound stable and, before taking them out on tour, gave them the use of his Nashville studio for about ten days at the start of last year. We'll gladly refrain from doing so, having already thoroughly sung the praises of a band of absolute top performers, with all due respect to the various engineers who have assisted them along the way.

The Oakland band, now a quartet with the addition of keyboardist Will Sprott, had already begun working on its fifth album a few months earlier, but was forced to change course midway after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, home to an artists' collective, which in December 2016 claimed the lives of about forty young people during a house music show, in their own city: a tragedy that "Backstreets" and the teen-tragedy-ballad-style farewell of "Don't Close Your Eyes", a close relative of the graceful reinterpretations on the latest Nicole Atkins album, directly call to mind.

Ever more entrenched in the glitter of their sublime diorama, Shannon and company push the nostalgia pedal to the floor along with an unattainable brand of retro-chic, taking their dusty girl-group vocation and the philological precision of their reinterpretations to the extreme. With her powerful contralto (somewhere between Amy Winehouse and Beth Ditto, if we really had to simplify things), Shannon the singer increasingly plays the dominatrix, never shying away from her melancholic magnetism, blending roughness and sweetness while the production handled by the frontman of Black Keys enhances the retro sheen and multiplies its allure through calls and responses of backing vocals. Despite these tricks, and despite the odd curious flourish of baroque (the harpsichord/organ dialogue on "It's Gonna Go Away"), it can happen that the already extremely high bar prevents one from fully appreciating the virtuosity on display, and that would be a shame.

Less amiable and scattershot than other garage-rock freaks, Clams seem to have repurposed yesterday's rampaging primitivist weirdness to place themselves fully in the service of an uncommon mimetic art, giving up something in terms of sincerity (and originality, of course) but further refining a formula that makes them ever more unchallenged champions of the fifties and sixties revival. In this sense, "Onion" is perhaps truly their most accomplished, unbridled, uninhibited work, a meticulous exercise in style that seems to leave nothing to chance. Particularly formidable is the backflip into full-blown bubblegum/surf epic on the title track, delivered with such candor by these master forgers that it comes off flawless, or the eccentric return of Cody Blanchard's six-string on "Love Strike," accompanied, fortunately, by perhaps the most romantically inclined Shannon yet and by rhythms that are not even all that vaguely Caribbean, for a sensational short-circuit. Not to mention the brazen return to the end-of-year school dance with the aching slow number "Did You Love Me," made for cheek-to-cheek dancing, or yet another heart-on-sleeve incursion by the velvety performer into the depths of a mythologized past ("I Leave Again"), the sinister evocations between spaghetti-western and rockabilly of "Strange Wind," or the calypso/pop-song interlude of "I Never Wanted Love," with its multicolored papier-mâché backdrops courtesy of the farfisa and the inevitable vintage guitars supplied by their host.

Even the passages you might call minor, the lighter and more carefree ones like "Tell Me When You Leave" or "If You Could Know" – with its enchanting doo-wop mini-chorus and a Shaw as sensually kittenish as she rarely allows herself to be – contribute to the success of the fresco, even in terms of perspective. The collateral cost of mannerism, of excessive affectation, inevitably remains a calculated risk, but the Californians compensate with the authority of those so thoroughly settled into their role that they can occasionally afford the luxury of autopilot, without missing a beat but, above all, without giving the listener any reason for complaint. If you're not among the ranks of the detractors we mentioned at the start, then perhaps it's not too late to lend an ear to the unrivaled Shannon Shaw and her Clams.

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