“Silver Tongue,” the first song from the New Haven-based Shy’s first album, Former, starts off with a splashy cymbal crash, a supple beat, a sinewy guitar, the sound of a band that has found its groove. There’s something serene and peaceful about it at first, but that’s just a front.
“I don’t know why / I believe you every time,” Shy — a.k.a. Shyanne Horner — sings. “I can’t see through you anymore / It’s killing me.” Her voice still seems calm enough. But there’s already less than a minute to go before the song explodes.
When the match is struck, Quinn Turlington’s drums shift to a pounding beat that Horner and bassist Mike Kusek match. Horner’s voice starts to crack as she sings. Then comes Kusek’s guitar solo, a howling, distorted thing that isn’t afraid to get pretty dissonant. It’s the first expression of Horner’s anger that she matches in the verse that follows, her voice having developed a full-on betrayed. The song reaches its breaking point, and suddenly does. At the end, nothing’s left but the skeleton of a beat, a whispering beat, and a devastated voice. It all happens in just over four minutes.
Former is marked by the same combination of thoughtful arrangements and raw, honest performances throughout the album. “9.5” swings between the broad tango of a Western movie and a huge, slow beat in the chorus that opens the song out even further. “CT 2 JFK,” slides into a dreamy waltz that stops in just the right places to float through the air before having its own 30 seconds of rage. “Shirt” rests on a bubbling guitar that the drums do their best to constantly upset in unsettling ways before unfurling into a slow, syncopated feel that gives the song a chance to roam. The album’s closer, “Rock Song,” waits to deliver on its title’s promise, but when it does, it really does.
“Window” might be Former’s most straightforward, built on a beat that drives through the song. But in the second half it gathers momentum as Turlington uses more of the drums kit and Horner’s voice picks up an edge.
“I don’t mind, I don’t care much,” Horner sings. “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine, by me.” By now you know that with an album this smart and emotionally rich, she doesn’t mean it. The last five seconds prove it.