Shy Child- Neil Young, Not NuRave

Thu 12th Jul, 2007 in Features

Shy Child is without a doubt a band you should listen to, not just because Pete Cafarella and Nate Smith make some of the best – œclear the floor while everyone else stands around looking on in awe at your super fresh dance moves’ music, but because they base this music around possibly one of the most underrated of all instruments- the keytar. Unlike myself and thousands of others (maybe even tens of thousands) it hasn’t always been Pete’s dream to own this particular instrument but now he wouldn’t be without it. – œIt was a random decision to get one, but now I’m a fan of it, and I’ve got a few of them at home’.

Most bands aren’t too fond of being labelled whether it be indie, post punk, prog rock or any one of the other millions of words record companies and music journalists sit around thinking up to categorise a sound, and Shy Child is no exception. They have earned the tag – œnu rave’, probably a result of their use of the aforementioned keytar in their songs which tends to conjure up in the minds of the uneducated Shy Child consisting of two guys wearing a lot of fluoro clothing, with hairstyles that involve a lot of preparation and thought. Pete is very clear about his feelings on this topic, – œLabels become very annoying, that whole scene has nothing to do with us and to get blatantly labelled like that is annoying. Nu rave is a joke that got out of hand’. So now that we’ve established that they are not nu- rave, if they must be labelled what would they like to be called? – œI think the official decision is electro rock. But all that is irrelevant, we just want to do what we want, and make the music we want. We really don’t want people to think about the band at all, just the music’.

Shy Child’s new album Noise Won’t Stop was produced by Paul Epworth (who has previously worked with Bloc Party, The Rakes and Maximo Park) and they found that even only working with Paul for a short amount of time resulted in some of the best tracks on the album, – œHe was just a really chilled, cool guy who obviously is really good at what he does. We only worked together for about a week but that week produced good stuff.’ Noise Won’t Stop features some guest vocalists on a few tracks including Spank Rock on the track Kick Drum, which was the result of a studio collaboration, as well as Stephanie MacKay being sought out to contribute vocals to Generation Y (We Got It). – œA couple of songs like Generation Y were written independently of the singer, but when we know someone can do something particularly well and add to the track, we like to work with them.’ If you need more proof that Shy Child are really not nu rave when I tell Pete that there is in fact a Shy Child tribute band web page in existence (no songs up yet, but they’re on their way) and ask him who he’d form a tribute band for he says without pausing, – œ Neil Young . That would be really cool’.

You know you’re destined for the big time and heading to grace the cover of NME when you play Glastonbury; and this year Shy Child were lucky enough to be invited along to wallow in the mud. – œIt was quite an experience. I wasn’t prepared for it, physically, mentally, at all. It was a big deal for us to play it, and it was very very muddy, the mud got into everything, all the equipment, but it was great.’ While looking at various reviews and fans’ comments on the band their impressively energetic live show always gets mention. – œLive stuff is the core of the band, it’s what we get the most fun out of doing, we’re basically doing it all for the live shows.’ With that in mind as Shy Child is heading to Australia in August what can we expect from the shows? – œA quality performance- we don’t just give 110%, we give 111%’. Shy Child are clearly a band that likes to go the extra mile, and for that reason alone ( as well as the keytar and Neil Young) we all should definitely ignore the labels and listen to Noise Won’t Stop.