Shadow In The Cracks is Jim and Mike Blaha, who you 
might (or should) recognize as leading Minneapolis trio The 
Blind Shake with their full frontal assault of baritone guitar, 
guitar and vocals, while co-founding friend Dave Roper beats a 
backbone into everything so solid and huge it seems each song 
will outlive the human race and stand amongst the overgrown, 
vermin-ruled urban wastelands left behind. From September 
2014 to May of 2015, the Minneapolis trio released two proper 
full-length albums (the excellent and crushing Breakfast of 
Failures on Goner Records and Fly Right on Slovenly Records, 
each respectively bookending the timeframe in question), a 
VHS release of the 2011 film Hey Hey What with the band in its 
longtime side-role backing bent-rock legend Michael Yonkers, 
and Modern Surf Classics-a truth-in-titling collaboration with 
Swami John Reis (he of Rocket From The Crypt/Drive Like 
Jehu/Hot Snakes and of course, Swami Records) released in 
January 2015. And all of this was supported by The Blind Shake’s earnest and unforgettable live showmanship to the tune of 29 dates across the U.S. and Canada followed by an 11-date April/May tour of Europe. 

Therefore regarding some slivers of downtime that 
punctuated summer 2015, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for one 
to assume the sibling faction (that’s Jim and Mike Blaha for 
those with very serious attention deficit issues) of the trio 
might choose an activity other than sitting across from one 
another in a room to write and record the nine-songs that make 
up the self-titled Shadow In The Cracks debut full-length. Credit 
a drum kit that wasn’t fully set up for the spark that lit a burn 
completely different from anything in The Blind Shake’s 
rapidly-growing, stylistic sweep of a discography, especially the 
recent fortifying of an infectious though not-to-be-fucked-with-
heavy read on noise-rock somewhat informed by the band’s 
own approach to garage-punk. 

From this Shadow In The Cracks provides an urban-psych 
comedown, detouring around relaxation and instead defined by 
the tension of navigating the small hours of the night staring at 
nothing until the birds outside sound the alarm of silent panic. 
The album conjures a thickened Spacemen 3 or a far more 
menacing circa-90s Brian Jonestown Massacre minus the silly-
ass rhetoric, and there’s more than a touch of the World Beat 
(Your Ass) sound of (cohesive) Sun City Girls. The Blaha’s 
customary baritone guitar + guitar setup is parlayed into long 
and abrasive sheets with economic Eastern-tinged leads 
snaking around on top. The driving rhythmic repetition of 
single kick-drum hits accented with Indian bells is the classic 
bare essence of psych and Krautrock minimalism. The singing 
invokes the flavors of despair behind the album’s themes of 
end-times inevitability and more personal strains of front-page 
bad news.  Given the style stumbled upon here, brevity of song-
craft rules…three maybe four-minute tracks with the longest an 
EPIC (relative to the creative forces behind it) six. Tastefully-
applied reverb dresses up an album where it makes sense.

Whatever the muse that influenced this drastic shift in 
style and feel, it blindsided the Blaha brothers and refused to 
stay in the room of its conception. Written in two months then 
recorded live in two days, this exponentially more laid-back Jim 
and Mike is nonetheless a vehicle for the depressive but moving 
moods born of the same place that inspired the band’s excellent  
moniker (plus song of the same name). As Jim so poignantly 
puts it, “It’s a reference to the darker parts of the dark.”

Tracklist
01 Timeless
02 800 Meters
03 Planting Flowers
04 Penguins Blood
05 Lonely Time
06 Elephant seal
07 When The Bubbles Stop
08 Shadow In The Cracks
09 Ships Roll In

Shadow In The Cracks "Timeless" // LP Out This October On Goner Records

JAY REATARD
All Over Again 
Live @ Rob's House, Cinco De Mayo 2007
Recorded by R.Mexico

CAT#: HOSSBOOT001

[HOSS BOOTLEG001] JAY REATARD - All Over Again (Live @ Rob's House, Cinco De Mayo 2007)

Acid Tongue

The Next Messiah

Miami

A Devil in the Woods (Remastered 2020)

Modern Problems

Feeding Frenzy

Thrill Is Gone

Ty Segall

The Drag

Voilà - Françoise Hardy Cover

A label. A store. A state of mind. 
Headquartered in Memphis, TN. Host of Gonerfest. Record store in Cooper Young carries vinyl records, CDs, cassettes, and more, specializing in garage rock, punk, indie rock, soul, jazz, blues and Memphis music. Home of Elvis Impersonator shrine. 

Label artists include: Jay Reatard, NOTS, Ex-Cult, Ty Segall, Guitar Wolf, King Khan & BBQ Show, Carbonas, Quintron, and Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and many more.

Shadow In The Cracks "Timeless" // LP Out This October On Goner Records

Goner Records

Recent comments

Reptilians From Andromeda

Alex Trotter

Related tracks