VIRGIL SHAW
After five records with San Francisco's Dieselhed, frontman Virgil Shaw broke new ground with his first solo effort Quad Cities, the nine songs emphasizing Shaw's plaintive vocals and sparse arrangements. Using a collection of oddball instruments for accents, including a Chinese trumpet, a vibraphone and saw, Shaw worked with a handpicked cast of local talent featuring Danny Heifetz (Dieselhed, Mr. Bungle), Palmer (Mommyheads), Freeman (Pell Mell) and Matt Hall.
Still Falling promises to affect the same quality of observing without judgement with seemingly simple lyrics and melodies that each listening shows to be more and more complex. The songs burrow into your memory, pulling themselves out and repeating. Beautiful and harsh, like a Carver or O'Hara short story put to music. The characters hurt and misunderstood, yet clinging to their last shreds of dignity, like a life rope.

Instruments ranging from acoustic guitar to hammond organ to thai gongs render each song with the proper delicate washes or intensity to match his voice, which in turn whispers or wails in getting his point across.
Many of the cast from Quad Cities appear on the latest and Mark Eitzel pops up on a couple of gems. Included are two covers that could not have been better choices, Wilderness, by Terry Allen and David Byrne and Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home, to round things out.

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