Album Review: Spiders - "Shake Electric"

There’s retro, and then there’s retro.  Spiders, a heady four piece from Sweden is true-blood retro from the cover art on down.  Their new album “Shake Electric” borrows elements from many of the historic corners of rock and roll, beginning with its humble roots and going straight through its seventies heydays and eighties flair.

The cover art for the record is a direct descendant of those which have come before, a sort of space-age mashup of Joan Jett and David Bowie, and the music contained within isn’t so far off those principles.  The basic tenets of Spiders is to portray rock as it used to be and could be again, simple melodies with some stylistic flair and a heavy-handed repetition that channels the heady days of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.”

The album’s lead track, “Mad Dog,” combines the basic sensibility of classic rock with the quickness of punk to create a humming, catchy song that blurs by in two and a half minutes.  We see this blueprint repeated a few times on the record, including the melodic and even “Bleeding Heart.”  The rhythm section of Spiders plays well within the pocket of their own talent and is very much in efficient time with each other.  “Shake Electric” was recorded live at the band’s insistence and the result is an album that sounds organically tight and unmolested by invasive technology. 

Spiders takes advantage of their natural feel by incorporating a lot of sounds that have worked well for rock and roll in the decades before.  There’s a fair amount of Joan Jett and T-Rex on this album, obviously not in a literal sense, but in the way the songs are constructed and presented.  There’s more to it than that, though.  Listen to “Control” and you’ll hear the classic Deep Purple gimmick of clearing the bridge to make room and build anticipation for the resulting guitar solo.  It’s a time-honored trick, successful in many times and genres.

With all that said, while the tempo of Spiders occasionally changes, the temperature of the music seldom does.  Once the band settles into a rhythm, that’s the only foundation they’re going to lay for that three minute song.  That makes for consistent and high-quality execution, but trades in a sense of adventure to achieve it.

“Shake Electric” therefore asks vocalist Ann-Sofie Hoyles to shoulder an awful lot of the burden, as she must single-handedly carry the album’s emotional experience.  She does an adequate job of singing within her range to meet that demand, and her voice is tinged with enough gravel to be both relatable and believable.  That said, Hoyles pretty much sings at one color for the duration of the record, which leaves a song like “Hard Times” lacking a certain punch.  It’s not so difficult for a listener to envision that same song with raw power of Janis Joplin or the soulful mourn of Etta James.  Those images in themselves speak to the open space left behind in the performance.

If music were an Olympic sport, the judges would knock Spiders for their seemingly low degree of difficulty.  However, they would receive high marks for their execution of the routine and the performance in general.  If you’re looking for a retro rock record to tide you over until the dawn of the new year and its possibilities, feel free to try “Shake Electric.”