During the song ‘Stand’, Steff Ketteringham utters the line “jam the key in upside down”. Despite now being six albums into their recording career it is still similarly difficult to categorize the music of Shield Your Eyes, the London three-piece band that Ketteringham fronts. Described, variously, as post just about every single thing from progressive to punk, theirs is a sound that consistently defies simple categorization.
Stitched together from various studio sessions, a couple of blistering live shows in Tottenham – ‘Drill Your Heavy Heart’ is incendiary – and unspecified bedroom tapes, the latest long playing record in that increasingly baffling sequence is Reciprocate. Guitarist and vocalist Ketteringham and his long-standing musical brother-in-arms, drummer Henri Grimes are this time round joined by bassist Dearbhla Minogue and together they kick up the most fearful and unholy storm of discord and discompose.
With one foot in some of the more unlistenable post-psychological warfare that is Trout Mask Replica and the other standing anywhere between the spirit of free jazz and Saturn, Reciprocate straddles a huge sonic divide. On the avant-garde blues of ‘Dilemma’, the protean Ketteringham steps into a world once inhabited by Captain Beefheart’s guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo before quickly mutating into original Can singer Malcolm Mooney – all wavering, quavering atonality – on the ensuing ‘Abandon’.
Throughout Reciprocate there are also fleeting reminders of the late, great Irish bluesman Rory Gallagher – Ketteringham’s first, and still major musical inspiration – and there are occasional nods towards Kiln House period Fleetwood Mac. ‘Perpetual Blues’ and ‘Stand’ both grapple with the growing tensions between the blues and rock n roll that permeated that particular record.
But ultimately Reciprocate steps staunchly beyond the confines of mere influence. This is not always a wholly comfortable place to be – Ketteringham’s voice often stumbles off-key and the clattering conflict between guitar and drums does present a number of listening challenges – but the end product is never anything less than interesting and with their sixth album Shield Your Eyes once more continue to push at the outer parameters of innovation and improvisation.
[Rating:3.5]
Reciprocate will be released on 24th November 2014 through Romac Puncture Repairs. It can be listened to, and pre-ordered here
