Joe (No, he ain’t gettin’ mellow) Fernbacher, Creem, 2/80
The fact that the Shoes don’t fall flat on their faces on their first release for a major label is quite a feat. After the initial chest-thumping critical acclaim they received from Black Vinyl Shoes (an LP recorded on their own in the confines of some lost suburban Illinois living room and released by JEM’s PVC label), the Shoes sort of sat back and waited for someone to get interested. As time progressed, the legend of the Shoes and their rowdy living room record became as strong as the legend of Buster Brown. Someone got interested. Word hit the streets. Things were expected of this band. And they’ve more than risen to the challenge.
Present Tense is a collection of twelve pop gems, an album that lets it be known that the Shoes are not merely another of the dime-a-dance pop bands currently battling for boot room on the bandstand floor. They pump away with forceful precision and style, and their songs are laced with all the inherent power and emotion of early Sixties radio music. Here is an American band with little or no politics, an American band firmly locked into the fibrillations of teenage starehood--love lost, love regained, love expected, love not returned. They are as teenage as seven guys loose in some kinda drunken alien haze cruising through the soft hot nights of Indian summer looking for the last moments of women as they stumble around bars reeking of pink ice, tequila sunrises, and the soma-inducing scent of Chanel No. 5, textured with burrito barf. Know what I mean?
I’ve always been one to subscribe to the adage that life is only worth living if it’s on the B-side, and side two of this album bolsters that philosophy nicely. The stunning conceptual understatement of the three part “Three Times,” coupled with the sheer searing truth of Gary Klebe’s “Now and Then” and Jeff Murphy’s “Every Girl” makes for a solid sensation of bein’ wronged and bein’ right about feelin’ good about bein’ wronged. Hotcha.
“Tomorrow Night” is a classic--it was a classic the minute it showed up as a Bomp single last year and even the knowledge of a previous version does nothing to deaden the force here of this bittersweet cavatina to sneeraholic sensuality. Except for “Hanging Around With You” which just never realizes itself, Present Tense succeeds on every count. It’s rockin’ sexy, and it’s a pop album that only too well clarifies just what a pop album, band, song is, was, and should always be.
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