The eclectic “Dali’s Clock” jumps from beat to beat, as worthy of a second listen as a deeper look at the surrealist painter’s famed works, all the while nodding to a deep loss for Shannon Shaw of Shannon & The Clams.
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Stream: “Dali’s Clock” – Shannon & The Clams
The best albums offer a grounding sense of catharsis and even hope, a pillar to lean on – and that’s an approach the lead singer of Shannon & The Clams has taken to heart.
Notes and themes of love and loss burrow their way deep into the sonic and lyrical content of the latest Clams’ LP, the recently released The Moon Is In The Wrong Place.
The convention-defying title track nods to a phrase spoken by Shannon Shaw’s late fiancé, Joe Haener, shortly before he was killed in an August 2022 car accident. Haener’s uncanny foresight into the celestial guides the album, as Shaw often sings of him now belonging to the stars and the sky.
Rather than let the unbearable loss knock her off course, Shaw and longtime bandmates set to work, delivering a set of timeless and genre-blurring tracks – including the frenetic and often madcap track “Dali’s Clock.”
Shaw told Atwood Magazine that Joe’s roots growing up on a family farm shaped his life outlook, and time spent on his family farm after his death lent more depth to the track.
“This song is about the absurdity of life without him and coming to grips with where he is now,” Shaw shared in an exclusive interview with Atwood Magazine published earlier last month. “That concept of time and life has completely changed for me. WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS TIME WHAT IS LIFE? I kept asking myself this question.”
Surreal imagery from the Dali painting “The Persistence of Memory” wove its way into the song, as Shaw told Atwood the “ridiculousness of the melted clocks were haunting me.”
“I had no choice in this matter and the tick tock I think captures that desperate feeling of wait wait I’m not ready yet,” she added. “‘Wait, I need a second, I didn’t agree.’ Walking around on the farm feeling like he should be there, but he is ‘gone.’”
The track, like the album itself, is grounded by the Clams’ distinct sensibility – there’s a timeless air of groovy funk, ‘50s-esque doo-wop and deeply romantic songs woven through with at-times folks-y rock and a sturdy backbeat.
Shaw’s vocals add serious character and flair – there aren’t many singers in the indie rock world today with the range of Shaw.
Shaw sings of her late fiancé being “set free like Lou Reed” as she’s left to grapple with the fallout, a process that Shaw appears to find cathartic in its own way – revisiting these songs onstage via the band’s ongoing spring tour.
“Dali’s Clock” also takes on a sort of fever dream quality in a live setting, as with a recent show at Brooklyn Polish community hall-meets-concert venue Warsaw.
Walking in a daze for days,
a head like a balloon
I’m barely holding on
Sent a mеssage in a bottle,
it can’t reach you thеre
I’m in the wrong world
Somehow got a message
back but it made no sense
It’s just a green stone
It told me
“Time is precious, time is void
Life is short so just enjoy your world”
Tick tock, Dalí’s clock
Complete with a blaze of flashing lights in shades of red, purple and blue, the effect is not unlike, say, the psychedelic boat ride from 1970s classic “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
In a live setting, Will Sprott’s intricate handiwork on keys manages to add both levity and depth to the show and to “Dali’s Clock,” making some songs more expansive, some more whimsical and some suitably dark at times.
The booming, dulcet and frenetic tones of The Doors’ Ray Manzarek are often close at hand – complete with the Clams’ distinctively retro stage backdrop (vintage comic book fonts come to mind), the effect is surreal, old-school and modern all at once.
The imagery put forth in “Dali’s Clock” begs another look through a new lens, a way of understanding the nature of the world. Like a Dali painting, there are no easy answers, and Shannon Shaw seems to know this innately – yet, there aren’t any wrong answers either, only a deeper, eternal understanding.
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Stream: “Dali’s Clock” – Shannon & The Clams
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© Jim Herrington
© Jim Herrington
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