Sometimes, it’s those under-the-radar type bands that have the most significant effect on a band’s music. One such band, the Missouri based Shiner held almost cult-like affection for strings of aspiring indie rock musicians of the math rock persuasion. After one final performance in 2003, Shiner called it a day and its members moved on to bigger and better things (though the latter part might be arguable to diehard Shiner fans).
Lead vocalist and guitarist Allen Epley found a home in The Life and Times - an indie rock band that drips with brooding intensity. Epley managed to build upon the base he created with Shiner and move his music in a direction that incorporates delectable tidbits from both Shiner’s past and Epley’s present. The result is a second full length album that will most certainly lead indie rock into the future.
The band took a leap of faith, went into debt, and emerged with an album that is as temperamental as it is mellow. Tragic Boogie showcases a dozen tracks that were handled with painstaking care and obsessive/compulsive precision. Epley’s voice resonates with honest, melancholic warmth on “Fall of the Angry Clowns” and is complimented justly by angular guitars and pulsating drumbeats. “The Politics of Driving” is reminiscent of the reverberating melodies of bands like Doves and The Verve (pre-"Bittersweet Symphony"). Tragic Boogie, with all of its muted intensity, is as oxymoronic as its name implies. Every song is a delicate counterbalance of hard and soft, but it is in those few moments when the two become entwined that the album truly comes alive.
-- Brigitte B. Zabak [July 6, 2009]
