As soon as the needle hits the track, you hear what could be Curtis Mayfield singing in front of Van Morrison’s full band. Shine, the most recent album by Elroy, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire four-piece band, kicks off with a rousing horn-punctuated song “Walk Away” and the listener is transported to a late ’60s shindig.
The band Elroy is Marc McElroy—who wrote, produced, recorded, mixed and mastered the album—with Charlie Kickham, Brian Coleman, Adam Dolron, who co-arranged and co-produced the music. Other musicians who appear on the recording include Yana Blinder (background vocals), Chris Klaxton (trumpet), Eric Klaxton (saxophone), Bruce Derr (pedal steel guitar), Bob Kneeland (drums on “All I Want Is You”) and Lilit Davilan (background vocals on “Turn It Around”).
The orchestration throughout is vintage analog late-’60s style, with excellent timbres and equalization. The album sounds just as it would be performed live onstage with a good sound engineer, but with the careful separation and attenuation for every instrument and voice that can only be achieved in a recording studio.
Shine is a ten-song collection of original songs ranging from up-tempo tracks “Walk Way,” “Take The Blame,” Northshore Girls,” and “Make it Shine” to mid-tempo and more languorous songs. The most adventurous track, “Into The Fire,” takes listeners into the desperate land of Pink Floyd with an ominous chromatic climb up through the end of the verses, and excellent gently distorted humbucking guitar fills.
“All I Want is You” contains some perfectly played pedal guitar steel accompaniment that stops just short of veering into traditional country and western. Track four, “Northshore Girls,” is bolstered by a familiar three-chord verse figure (special thanks to “All Along the Watchtower”) but has some nice aggressive guitar work behind it. The rhythm section throughout the album is right on point; while Shine is ostensibly a rock record, the bass and drums inject a whiff of funk into the tracks.
If you can’t find the album, I highly recommend you head up to New England and catch the band live on stage!
