Shearling - Don't Look at Me the Way a Dog Might Look at Your Leg
Mishap Records
Shearling return 14 months removed from their debut Motherfucker I Am Both: "Amen" and "Hallelujah". Shearling released the EP's lead single - "Believe Me(Dust)" - on July 24th with the EP itself set for release 7 days later.
Considering the Religious themes of the debut's title and, in turn, the album's contents, you may expect their following works to remain appendaged to divine idea and works. It's deeply engrained in Shearling's worlds.
The EP opens on "Three Pebbles(Saltlick)". A track by the name of "Saltlick" also appears on Kent's Alexander, I am not a Saltlick solo album from 2024. An update? A homage? A world dipped back into? A thousand years of thirst. A rain that never falls. Measuring the hearts of Man; weighing up souls with sand. Six-feet from the answer yet blind to the fact. Right beneath your senseless nose; right above your touchless toes.
Soundbursts split the track like schizophrenic TV channels. Mom! God is on the toob again!
'Three pebbles: each one my respective future, present, past'
Children scream through the ether. Evil deeds are for doing, and they must be done. Three names branded on the horse's ass: Judas, Robert Johnson, and his....
The opener ends on masturbatory - artistically, and seemingly quite literally - self-hatred. Call it sackreligious(bad joke, we move).
'I'm not a good person like I want to be
And I want to go to Heaven
And I know in my heart that it's my fault'
The project is as heartfelt as Shearling have been up to this point. It's like an expose on the inner-workings and turmoil of the human state.
'Well my wrongs are cast in metal
Is it in rust they'll be atoned?
But the dust began to settle
I was left there all alone'
The project feels like an exposed jugular. An opening of sorts in the vulnerabilities that we all bear - to differing degrees. We're tied down to our wrongdoings and deeds. Setup since day one. Held at arms length by the powers that Be. Your prayers will be swept away with the dust.
"Surely You Know By Now" is the title track in some sense with the refrains of 'Don't look at me the way a dog might look.... might look at your leg'.
Sounds reverse forwards like elegant forwards-backflips. Swirls and wisps of a deceased candle caught in subtle backdraft. Did you not read the fineprint? This is a life sentence. A one-way ticket straight to and through yr skull.
'Young man in Idaho
I'm shaking at the thought
Young man in Idaho
I'm trying to forget'
Closing track "Your Reward" whimpers - in a gorgeous way - to life through bowing, breathing strings. Bodies laid bare in all their agonising, horrid glory. To be picked and pulled apart and poked at 'til days end. Under infinite inspection, yet no closer to the experience sought after. Vulnerable to no ends and no benefit.
A stupid question: anything that takes more than a single word to answer. Crushing huckleberries in your fingertips; pointing donkey jawbones at the Sun; Jesus speaks to you through the splinters upon which He is hung.
'The only request I have left is
When you say it
Look me in the eye'
It's far from immediate music. It twists and elegantly contorts to life in a manner requiring patience. It unfurls.
Would you answer the call, or let it ring
