Power pop band’s second album for Elektra

Having taught themselves to record in a home studio, Zion, Illinois’ Shoes produced three full albums on their own, including the “debut” Black Vinyl Shoes that led to their signing with Elektra. Their first outing for the major label, 1979’s Present Tense took them to the UK to co-produce with engineer Mike Stone. The results traded some of the band’s urgency and living room winsomeness for the polish and manicure a real studio allows. The singing, playing, melodies and lyrics, including a remake of “Tomorrow Night,” were terrific, but the fuller studio sound, which had been artfully compressed on their earlier 4-track recordings, gave away some of the band’s mystery.

For their second album with Elektra the band worked with Richard Dashut, who seemed to understand what differentiated Shoes from their peers. He kept the articulation of their previous outing, but dialed back the tendency to lay more studio sound into the final productions than a 4-track would have allowed; the guitars and drums are kept from being too big or stepping too far forward. The absence of keyboards (the buzzing solo of “The Things You Do” was actually played on a processed guitar), keeps this album from falling into the dated sound of the band’s peers’ contemporaneous efforts. The songs are just as hook-filled as those in the earlier catalog, and the vocals and harmonies are memorable.

Air Mail’s reissue augments the album’s original dozen cuts with four bonuses, “Jet Set,” “Laugh it Off,” “Imagination du Jour,” and “A Voice Inside Me.” The mini-LP cardboard jacket reproduces the original album covers, front and back, and the Japanese-language insert is supplemented by a mini-inner sleeve that includes a microscopic reproduction of the original lyric sheet. This is the sort of deluxe reissue that Shoes’ music deserves, making it a more precious collectors’ item than the original two-fer, though not offering up the demo dimension of 2007’s Double Exposure. Air Mail Records has also reissued mini-LP CD versions of Shoes’ two other Elektra releases, Present Tense and Boomerang, but with all three having become collectors’ items of their own, your pocket book is better off nabbing the albums in MP3 form [1 2]. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]