Music Style Rock Moderne

Artist History One thing's for sure. Shiny Things - their new album on Surfdog Records – is some of the most freaky, laid-back shiznit to storm outta Placerville, California in a long, long time. It's their third album. Their first one was what Miller calls a "really crappy four-track thing" released in 1999 entitled Boneville. The second was 2000's Weightless. You want stories? I could tell you about Miller basking in Europe like some Kerouacian road junkie. I could tell you he gets on the bus everyday and rides past farms to punch the time clock at his father's carpet cleaning business. His songwriting has that wonderful "life's a bitch but it's also real pretty" charm of Townes van Zandt. There's some Stephen Malkmus zaniness. And that achingly-beautiful-make-you-wanna-cry-but-not-cheesy-at-all-down-home-warm-ballad power of Bill Callahan and Nick Drake. From Shiny Things' opening track "Far Far Far," it's apparent that Miller has the ability to write those arcing, classic songs that made rock music exciting in the first place. The drawing out of a word here, an emotional strain of the voice there, the subtle melody shift, the understatement. He can write lines like "the moon is an ovum, and we are sperm" and somehow make the questionable sci-fi jive sound like one of the best escapist lines in history. In the same song, he screeches in his cracking, seductive rasp, "we're just fleeeeeeaaaaaasssszz, fleas on the tail of time." His dream girl is a "Psycho Ballerina," with whom he promises to steal the neighbor's cat and "drive into the middle of nowhere." The chorus - four-part harmonies, acoustic guitar, vintage synth - is so damn beautiful you forget, as you sing along, that you're yearning with Miller for a mentally disturbed girl in a tutu. Jesus. There are too many great lines to mention here. But possibly the most emblematic lyric is on the bone-simple, piano-in-an-echo-chamber closer, where Miller aches, "they cut off my arms, now I'm driving with my teeth...my looove, she waits for me." In anyone else's hands, that line may not work. In Miller's, it sounds ungodly, desperate and lovely. "Most of our songs follow this formula like, 'oh, this girl is going to save my life with her saliva," Miller tells me. "Or, 'I'm so sick of this town, I'm gonna break for the borderline!" And just when you think he's going serious on you, he quotes Madonna.

Group Members Rusty Miller - vocals/guitar Sheldon Cooney – bass Mike Curry - drums Lee Bob Watson - keyboards/guitar

Press Reviews "ONE OF CALIFORNIA'S GREATEST UNKNOWN BANDS." New York Times

Location Encinitas, CA - USA

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