Description
Shiva Burlesque released a pair of vivid, multi-faceted albums: Shiva Burlesque (1987) with drummer Joey Peters and bassist James Brenner; followed by Mercury Blues (1990), again with Peters on drums, Paul Kimble replacing Brenner, and featuring cellist Greg Adamson. Between the two albums the songwriting output by Jeff Clark and Grant Lee Phillips elevated into high gear, and the band recorded a number of new songs in demo versions, mostly on a home studio eight track cassette machine with Paul Kimble engineering. Work began on the Mercury Blues album proper in early summer of 1990, tracking (largely after-hours during "down time") at Village Recorders, one of the best equipped, finest sounding, studios in Los Angeles at the time.
Along with the intense and potent results of those sessions, IPR's beautiful, remastered, 2021 reissue includes a bonus album of ten of the demo songs, none of which have ever been previously released.
Shiva Burlesque 'Mercury Blues (Skullduggery)' has sequentially numbered packaging includes two BLUE LPs, a 12" x 24" folding poster insert with song lyrics and imagery, and a postcard-sized full color card with free download code for the entire 2 LP set.
Uncut Magazine editor Allan Jones lauded the release as "...timeless, brilliant music" . Drawing comparisons to everything from John Cale to Echo & the Bunnymen to early Leonard Cohen, and described by All Music Guide as "... a powerful and graceful band too post-punk to be folk rock, and too folk to be post-punk".
