Intense personal feelings, nostalgia for childhood, growing older. They’re feelings we all encounter at one point or another in our lives, and in his new album Goodbye Twenty Nine London singer-songwriter Max Shire explores all this and more. Rehearsed for two months and then recorded over twenty days, the album is a labour of time and effort, infused with emotion.
The vocals are natural, full of a kind of inner pride, laced with the touches of sadness. There’s a tension going on here, fought out within these tracks, back and forth. The guitar is melodic, ranging from gentle to forceful at a moment’s notice. The Radiohead influences are obvious, but for those that find Thom Yorke too quirky these days, Max Shire offers a more grounded alternative.
The tracks are long and sprawling, the majority of the songs on the album lasting over six minutes. It gives the whole record a real sense of being an audio environment; a blank canvas that Shire is painting his sounds upon. There’s room for him to explore, to showcase all aspects of his musicianship. These tracks are the grey urban streets, the sounds telling the story of all that which has passed upon them. Office Scum is a definite highlight – as the shortest track here it’s also the easiest way in, distilling everything Max Shire is about into three and a half minutes of greatness.
At times, when Shire really lets loose - such as on Strum – he pulls out epic, Muse-like guitar solos. And it is this capacity for versatility that keeps the listener hooked throughout the album. This is not the sound of a tame indie band who can be pigeon-holed in five minutes and then forgotten about, here the music speaks for itself; constantly changing and evolving from end to start. There’s the string-laced Late that comes across like Biffy Clyro at the more gentle moments. This is beautiful, chilled out rock to calm the soul, to sit back and simply relax to.
