Artist: Shy
Label: Escape Music
Release: 2011
Length: 66:16
Rating: 3.5/5
The new Shy album was a real puzzle. These guys are prominent standard-bearers of the British approach to melodic rock. Let me quickly toss out a short and sweet history of the band’s past exploits for everyone who didn’t know them before reading this review, but who’ve always been drawn to the melodic rock tradition:
“Shy started out as metalheads under the name Trojan. In 1982 they sensed the times on the scene were changing, left behind their “pub gig” metal, and Dan Hull took them under his wing with his label Ebony Records. Vocalist Tony Mills joined the lineup and the band recorded their studio debut “Once Bitten… Twice Shy”! The band’s popularity curve shot up steeply, and after playing alongside the likes of Magnum, Pallas, UFO and Twisted Sister, it was time to share the stage with much bigger names that crowds went wild for, like Bon Jovi, Meat Loaf and Gary Moore. Before the release of the most important album of the band’s career, “Excess All Arreas” from 1987, RCA Records relocated the band to Los Angeles so they could soak up the California radio rock vibe. Together with “Though It Out” by FM and “Native Sons” by Strangeways, that album is one of the cornerstones of the British melodic hard rock scene.”
The new album marks a turning point. Singer Tony Mills isn’t on it. He’s been replaced by Lee Small, vocalist of Phenomena and Surveillance. The previous two albums, “Unfinished Business” (2003) and “Sunset And Wine” (2005), brought the scene the most refined and sonically most polished records of Shy’s career, adding two more undisputed musical pearls to the colorful AOR mosaic of the genre’s finest achievements.
This new album simmered for a full six years. In the meantime, Tony Mills became a member of the Norwegians TNT, who sadly are only a pale shadow of themselves since Tony Harnell left. Lee Small is a revolutionary and less expected choice for guitarist Steve Harris and his Shy crew. The man is known for a signature voice that’s an interesting mix of Glenn Hughes and Airrace vocalist Keith Murrell, with a dash of Scandinavian vocal approaches in melodic rock.
Shy obviously wanted this kind of change. It’s also interesting that after six years off, they felt a kind of “resurrection” and rebirth, so they redefined their name too, by self-titling their new studio album. And of course it offers something different. The first thing you notice is that the new Shy album is way more crushing in its production and cranked up in a hard rock way, the riffing is pushed to the front, the keyboards are deliberately tucked away in the background, and the first three tracks hold an extremely rocking intensity in a dark atmosphere that no Shy album has had before. The melodic note is clearly front and center, and the album is packed with the kind of melodic hunger that only Shy know how to serve up. The atmospheric highlights are the choruses, which hit you right on first listen.
And yet. “Shy” doesn’t reach the level of AOR refinement of the previous two albums. It’s simple. Tony Mills, a man we can say without mincing words was “the voice on the heavens,” the British twin of Steve Perry (Journey), was a character who could optimize every elusive reach of melodic perfection and fully elevate it with his talent. A new song like Over You is practically tailor-made for his voice, which would work much better than it does with Lee Small. There are a few more such moments on “Shy,” like Save Me. But that was actually expected, a fact you simply have to accept.
Lee Small, who definitely shines, is a singer cut from different cloth. His voice isn’t pitched as high, it carries a touch of soul improvisation that leans venomously toward Hughes, and with it comes that feeling of pain you find in soul and blues music. An interesting situation. And, roughly speaking! This album is great too. No less and no more. It doesn’t hit the perfection of the previous two, but it’s often the case that recapturing the past with new faces in the lineup is practically impossible, even if fans of Shy would love it. The only known example of a commercially successful eighties AOR band that managed to even top its past is the newly rebuilt Foreigner. But Shy craved change. And they successfully built it into the basic starting points and components of their recognizable (and very own) expressive message.
So the dark, crushing, yet still shamelessly hungry new Shy album is a record that all Shy fans will be glad to have, and it should make an even bigger impression on those who don’t know the band well, or don’t know it at all, and are therefore unburdened by the albums Tony Mills sings on. And anyone who misses the energy of “Sunset And Wine” and “Unfinished Business” can, as a last resort, turn for help to the two studio albums by Serpentine with Tony Mills on lead vocals.
The album “Shy” is a point of bold and highly successful transition for an excellent classic band of British melodic rock. It has an exceptional theatrical atmosphere and a venomous riff-heavy drive that no Shy album before it has delivered. It’s an album that doesn’t ring out as “sweet and under-the-skin catchy” as the ones with Mills, but in the end, why would we even demand or look for that? Shy are on a new path, and let’s hope the new album is only the first step in a newly found inspiration of artistic maturing with Lee Small in the lineup, and that its studio successors will intensify this new creative chemistry, build on the expression and deepen the artistry. I deliberately haven’t singled out tracks this time – let them seduce you fully – but if I may toss one out quickly, Blood On The Line is a downright unique combination of searching for melodic fluidity and a dose of doomy theatrical drama, and its triumphant chorus instantly sends shivers down your spine. The new Shy album, too, keeps up the urge to put every true melodic rock devotee to the test!
Lineup
Lee Small – vocals
Steve Harris – guitar
Joe Basketts – keyboards
Roy Stephan Davis – bass
Bob Richards – drums
Production
Shy and Andy Faulkner
Tracklist
1. Land of a Thousand Lies
2. So Many Tears
3. Ran out of Time
4. Breathe
5. Blood on the Line
6. Pray
7. Only for the Night
8. Live for Me
9. Over You
10. Sanctuary
11. Save Me
12. Union Of souls
