Shelf Lives - Chris Pellnat - Eliza Edens
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| Photo - Derek Bremner |
South London duo Shelf Lives return this week with new single and video "Skirts & Salads", marking a year since the release of their self-titled debut single "Shelf Life". The new single is released today alongside a typically idiosyncratic video created by Ben Pollard. "Skirts & Salads" is the first new music to be heard following their widely praised debut mini-album 'Yes, offence' - released on the band's own Not Sorry Mom Records imprint in April earlier this year.
Originating from Toronto, Canada and Northampton in the UK respectively, Shelf Lives consists of vocalist Sabrina Di Giulio and guitarist/producer Jonny Hillyard – who now both reside in South London. New single "Skirts & Salads" was co-produced by the band's frequent collaborator SPACE (IDLES, Do Nothing) and was written shortly after the recording of 'Yes, offence' was wrapped, at a time when the pair had the likes of Vegyn, Deftones, Aphex Twin and Turnstile on heavy rotation.
That diverse sounding board helps to assimilate Shelf Lives' own unique sound. An unholy melting pot of explosive electronic percussion, searing guitar work and irrepressible vocal turns, "Skirts & Salads" lyrically finds Sabrina taking aim at societal female stereotypes.
Speaking on the lyrical inspiration behind the new song, Sabrina said: "Skirts & Salads is inspired by general female stereotypes, we've kept it pretty obvious with the lyrics. It's written and delivered in a tongue in cheek manner and we thought it would be interesting incorporating chauvinistic language but using it to our advantage in a way; referring specifically to the line "I like/want my girls like that". Without really realising it we are highlighting how annoying it is, as well as how deeply rooted these ideas and language are in our society and....sub-consciousness."
A high-octane trashy pop banger based on a porn sample that spawned a shopping list of female stereotypes; rather than mount a soapbox, however, Sabrina absorbs those stereotypes and spits them back out in the chauvinistic hook “I want my girls like that” – delivered in an ironic drawl. The title itself mocks the reductive way society still thinks of women, with Sabrina contemplating the first things that generally come to mind. “I was like… I love a salad? That’s one,” she laughs. “And that’s the whole point. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s about the annoyance of that being the whole definition. What are women? Skirts and salads.”
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Recorded as the pandemic was ebbing and recently released (Sept. 16), "Go" is a rather positive statement overall, but is colored by darkness as well.
It brings together unusual instrumental juxtapositions (vibraphone, dulcimer, guitar, clarinet, guitars...) and direct lyrics that build a distinctive message and vision.
Chris Pellnat is a songwriter from Hudson, NY, USA. In addition to solo work, he also plays electric guitar in the band, The Warp/The Weft and is 1/2 of the duo, Teeniest.
Having been featured as a solo artist and with his other musical ventures here on Beehive Candy on a number of occasions, Chris continues to impress both creatively and with some beautifully crafted songs.
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| Photo - Anthony Mulcahy |
Eliza Edens final single off her beautiful new LP We'll Become the Flowers. Tom and Jerry is a beautiful country-pop tune, buoyant and classic, a nod to childhood cartoons and that deeply relatable running on a treadmill feeling.
Here's Eliza on the song: I watched hours and hours of Tom and Jerry on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. The story is the same every time and yet it’s always so satisfying. Somehow it resurfaced in my mind as a way of explaining how hard we try to accomplish things that are forever out of reach—such as fighting for a dying relationship—even though Tom will just never catch Jerry! It’s an apt metaphor for the tension of always wanting or yearning for something and for two characters always going after each other. I wrote this song to try and find some levity during a difficult breakup.
"On Eliza Edens’ sophomore album We’ll Become the Flowers, she seeks to understand what happens after the end. Whether grappling with heartache or a loved one's mortality, the Brooklyn-based songwriter reimagines endings not as finite events but as devotional experiences that give way to new beginnings. Edens takes inspiration from folk luminaries such as Nick Drake, Karen Dalton and Elizabeth Cotten, sowing her compositions with introspection born from her own grief. What emerges is a glowing collection of songs that serve as a map through tumult, toward hope.
Edens sings and writes with an equally tender reverie as in her 2020 debut album Time Away From Time. But where We’ll Become the Flowers diverges, is in its narrative vulnerability. Each song is bursting: with sorrow, with anger, with the miracle of existence. “I wrote this album out of emotional necessity,” Edens says. ""I had just gone through a breakup. And around the same time, my mother was diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. I was spending a lot of my time trying to understand what it means to watch the hopeful person who raised me seem to slowly fade away before my eyes.” As the pandemic loomed, Edens turned to music: ""This project was a rope I used to pull myself out of misery, to view the despair I was feeling from a different angle. It was also my escape.”
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