Album Review: Keep Shelly In Athens – Now I’m Ready
2 min read
Keep Shelly In Athens is an eclectic Grecian pop duo making a name for themselves with their brand of floaty vocals and rhythmic electronica. Now I’m Ready will be the outfits’ second album release, but the first with new singer Myrtha. It’s not dance music as you know it: quite the opposite in fact.
Opening the album is Fractals, an almost ethereal, ambient melody set with a rhythmic drumbeat that manages to really take the dreamy vocals to a higher place. As you delve deeper into the record you find yourself experiencing songs that are less pop-electronica and have a lot more grit to them. Hollow Man features almost tribal like drums beat at quite a frantic pace that contrasts the high floaty vocals that are distorted with the use of echo to create a song with much more depth than previous tracks. To close off the album is Hunter and it’s a tune that works to really summarise every sound heard before it. Starting off sweetly, with floaty electronica similar to Fractals and Silent Rain it moves into a darker, much more haunting melody reminiscent of Hollow Man and Line 4 (Orange) with deeper, male vocals repeating the line “I’ve been hunted” to really add to the serious nature of the track.
While Now I’m Ready sees a plethora of elements come together to make each track it’s often at a loss to the lyrics. Within this album it’s all too common to find yourself lost in the swirling synth while the vocals are merely another layer of beat rather than a guide leading you through the track. Benighted and Nobody, definitely find themselves not making a real impact because it’s pretty much impossible to truly understand the vision Shelly In Athens is aiming to create within each song when they’re putting so much into the backing track. While some of the songs work well on their own it’s just disappointing to see them miss the mark as a smooth, cohesive collective.
