Shinyribs (from the album Transit Damage

Shinyribs (from the album Transit Damage

Shinyribs (from the album Transit Damage available on Hardcharger Records/Blue Elan Records) (by Bryant Liggett)
Kevin Russell has perfected a sound. Rearing its shuffling around the dancefloor head toward the end of The Gourds run (a band Russell formed and led with other Austin players for a couple of decades) and fully emerging through multiple Shinyribs releases, dropped post Gourds, including the latest in Transit Damage, Russell’s sound is one of swamp Boogie and twangy Soul delivered in conga-line fun with Shinyribs, a horn-heavy band that is the package with Kevin at the helm.
Shinyribs has always been a maestro of ambiguity via funky flash, uttering quips like ‘love is helium, not the balloon’ as he does in the album opener, “Simply Belong to You”. The band drops fast funk in “All the Best Things”, with Shinyribs slowing things down for the sleepy ballad title track where ambient pedal steel supports Russell’s aching vocals while “Reconsider” has a slacker Rock, lazy front porch vibe.
“La Folie De l’Humanite” is Russell lyrically questioning mankind but doing so in a tune with classical and Prog Rock fills via funky throwdowns.  “Alphabeta” has more funky breaks, “Little Drops of Summer” is beautiful in its lazy delivery, and “Kind” is the band tossing out a lesson in humanity where every line is quotable, from ‘lend a hand before you start pointing fingers, don’t thumb your nose before you open your arms’ to ‘don’t waste your needle and thread on scarlet letters’. The real lesson however comes via ‘We all are kin, somewhere down the line’.
Transit Damage scores a party where everyone, literally EVERYONE, is invited, and “Kind” is the teachable moment we all should take home in a goodie bag. (by Bryant Liggett)
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