Shelley Short, “A Cave, A Canoo”
The house in Portland where Shelley Short grew up was filled with old instruments. Her mom played the flute, her father the guitar. She spent her childhood staying up late singing with her family, “listening to amazing records, chopping wood and keeping warm by it during the winters, playing dominoes and listening to Jimmie Rodgers for the first time while water from the leaky roof dripped into a bucket.” In a word, the perfect place to listen to her upcoming album “A Cave, A Canoo,” (Hush Records) out October 13.
The setting and characters of Short’s childhood seem to have inspired a lot of her recent songwriting. “I was thinking about my great grandfather, who worked in a carnival, traveling around as an iron jaw, and about my great grandmother who homesteaded out in Montana, all by her lonesome.” This sense of adventure and discovery is everywhere in the album, carried by Short’s unique, high-pitched yet powerful voice. It’s filled sometimes with childlike wonder, and at other times it’s all grown up, but it’s always authentic. This is an album takes you places, beginning close to home and ending some place less familiar. In “Time Machine/Submarine” we go back to that childhood home in Oregon, which “was like growing up in a time machine; in some ways we lived like it was 1896, growing our own food, wearing eclectic clothes in a Victorian home and singing our own songs.”
Short feels completely at home moving from moments of lightness to something more eerie and open ended. In fact, she recorded the album at her house (also in Portland) which doubles as Liophant Studios. “I wasn’t worried about time, or money, and that was really freeing. The record was recorded during the winter months, which might have had something to do with the overall feeling. It rains a lot in Portland. I have always loved the rain. “Interlude” has the sound of the rain recorded from my front porch.” All these personal elements make this a record that feels very close to home. But Short never gets too close. You get the feeling she’s not revealing everything, which is, perhaps, why she has such good replay value. At any rate, it’s an album you’re going to want to keep coming back to.
Shelley Short plays at Death By Audio on Saturday, Sept. 19th with Alexis Gideon
