Album Review: Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell - "The Trouble With The Shovell"

Lingering guilt. That’s what this review is about.

Way back in 2012, an editorial was written on the forerunner of this website, detailing the ten best albums of that year.  That editorial listed Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s album Don’t Hear it…Fear It! as the best album of the year.  On a list that included some all-time luminary albums such as The Sword’s Apocryphon, Cancer Bats’ Dead Set on Living and Graveyard’s Lights Out.

And there was nothing wrong with Don’t Hear It…Fear it!...but there is no way on this blue earth that it was the album of the year over some of the heavyweights listed above.  The mistake was immediate and irreparable.

So, each time The Shovell decides to release new music, the same guilty party that made that mistake devotes time and energy to the new record, to see if something can be gleaned from The Shovell’s progression that makes the guilt sting just a little less.

And so the exercise repeats, as the band stands to release their fifth full length album, “The Trouble with the Shovell.”

It’s…fine.  It’s an enjoyable record.  There are some great moments at the end, like “Blue Mountain Dust,” which evokes memories of the band’s best song, “Don’t Hear it…Fear It!” (not to be confused with the album of the same name,) and “Another Greasy Spoon,” which as the title suggests, is classic blues sleaze rock in its best and final form.  

Really, the whole record is a dirty, grimy rock experience, which fits well into what the idiom of The Shovell has always been, lo, these eighteen years.  Just pop on album opener “Laughing Gravy,” and be reminded of the same kind of mood that allowed Black Sabbath to open Master of Reality with “Sweet Leaf.”

The difference is, Master of Reality is so much more than that opening track, evolving into “Children of the Grave” and ultimately into the enduring classic “Into the Void.”  By contrast The Trouble With the Shovell never really moves past “Laughing Gravy” to become something more.  So, if you like the first track, you’ll like most of what follows.  And if you don’t, well…

There is the brief moment of “Kind Boy” which bops along with something almost akin to the upbeat tempos of classic southern rock, and that’s a fun interlude as The Shovell channels their inner Golden Earring.  As far as versatility goes, that’s about all that’s on offer, though.

The guilt remains.