the Shimmies

Wednesday night’s performance at San Francisco’s Bottom Of The Hill solidified what I had already come to believe over the past few months: The Shimmies are a band currently at the absolute top of their game.
Hot on the heels of releasing their excellent sophomore album, To All Beloved Enemies, the Chico, CA indie-rock four-piece have really begun to stretch their legs creatively, and the impact of the live shows has benefited greatly as a result.
As brothers Jimmy, Sean and Stephen Galloway strapped on guitars and drummer Jack Gingerich took his place behind the kit, the room’s attendance was sparse at best. Luckily, by the halfway point of the first song, the patio stragglers flooded in and crowded onto the floor.
“The Mountains Are Steep, The Mountains Are Cold” put on display everything that makes The Shimmies so effective at what they do. It begins with Sean singing a pretty melody in a falsetto akin to that of Jeff Buckley or Thom Yorke in their quieter moments, and is backed by both the beautiful harmonizing of his brothers and reverb-soaked guitars and drums. “Mountains” then floats along for a few minutes before abruptly switching gears and turning into a frenetic, “Paranoid Android”-style freak-out, full of screeching guitar and some fine stick work from Gingerich.
Like many other bands of their ilk, The Shimmies rely heavily on the quiet-to-loud dynamic from verses to choruses. But unlike others, they do both very well. You’re not just simply waiting for the loud, anthemic choruses to hit, but instead enjoying the path they lead you down to get there. Excellent understanding of space and tactful use of (often poorly used) things like reverb and feedback helped The Shimmies repeatedly achieve these mini-buildups of emotional intensity turned wild catharsis.
The 45-minute set concluded with a jammy and inspired cover of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” complete with three or four minutes of outro soloing that found Sean playing on his back out amongst the crowd; a fun moment and ending to a solid, front-to-back set.
-Landon Moblad - Hi-Fi Hangover

At first, To All Beloved Enemies is not all that much. A slow strumming melody and ‘90s alt-rock postering, it almost makes you want to shrug your shoulders. “The Thing That Seems Hardest Is Actually The Easiest” would typically be the last song on an album and a modest ending for any rock album. It calms the mind, and it leaves you walking away with a bit of contemplation. But for The Shimmies this song is the first; a symbolic gesture that the end is only the beginning.

To All Beloved Enemies is the glorious soundtrack to your life, your death, and the beyond, all coming together and exploding into a billion points of light. Love, loss, death, life, triumph, anger, sadness: they are all presented with a display of defiance. This band has conquered it all, and I dare you to listen to this album and not feel anything.

Sure “Un Fantome” is a great Manic Street Preachers song, only if the Preachers wrote it, and the band takes a few turns riding the waves of fragility and delicate to powerful and explosive, all in one song. But it’s all just a part of the climb.

When you reach the top, “Love Holiday” makes you contemplate what you have just heard and then the chorus hits you like a bullet, pushing you off that cliff to sail into the unknown. “When the desperation fits.. These feelings in your bones will never go away. So let it out. Come on! Come on! Come on! And learn to sing.” The tremor in Sean or Jimmy Galloway’s voice (not sure which) when he sings these words, makes you think he is going to break down at any given moment. But he does not. And when they get near the breaking point, there is a moment of power rock balladry that makes you almost want to break down.

This is what The Shimmies are good at, really good at. They make you look inside yourself and whether you like it or not, their music brings out the most realistic elements of human nature and the world you live in. Like “Judas” having that feeling that you walked toward the light a while ago, or the noise-rock epic “Marnie” that brings us back to the beginning, you can faithfully say they have poured their heart and soul into this release. The only thing this band is not is content.

I have not heard such a powerful rock album since The Lips came out with The Soft Bulletin. Both are equally as impressive. That is where this band stands. - ZapTown

Today’s song is “The Thing That Seems The Hardest is Actually The Easiest” by The Shimmies. This song is from their album To All Beloved Enemies that is out now. The Shimmies was started as a
childhood project made up of brothers Sean and Jimmy Galloway’s first names, The Shimmies have created a self-appointed genre for themselves, which they lovingly refer to as “home school rock.”
The Shimmies have their eyes set on sharing their music with a greater audience, with national release their current album To All Beloved Enemies in addition to an upcoming tour of the US in late 2010. The Shimmies put their own contemporary influence on favorite 90's memories.
For more information on the band check out MySpace, Facebook, and their official website. Get their album now on iTunes.
- Eat Sleep Breathe Music

The Shimmies
To All Beloved Enemies
Self-Released
Quietly last week The Shimmies released their latest album To All Beloved Enemies. The band of 3 brothers Galloway – Sean, Jimmy, Stephen and longtime friend Jack Giengrich is from Chico, California.
To All Beloved Enemies is the best self-released album I’ve heard to date this year. What can be better than a family of brothers harmonizing with each other over some well crafted guitar rock? (see: Kings of Leon)
Standout tracks like Judas and Beloved Enemies (click on track names for free downloads) have received praise from bay area writers all over. Filled with emotional, heart wrenching lyrics to match their soaring guitar lines this group has tested the waters of time and put together one of those albums you can’t stop listening to, front to back.
The Shimmies will be at Bottom of the Hill on Wednesday, August 4th with Samvega and Maere. (unfortunately the same night as our Rumble). Click here for some tickets. Also catch them on Facebook, or buy the album - HERE. - The Owl Mag

Play El Shimmies Show

Turrtle & Ky talk with Jimmy from The Shimmies!!! Say that five times fast. Get to know what this emotionally-sounded-n-grounded indie-group has cookin in music land. We’re hookin’ you up with a handful of songs you can shimmy your mind around.

Ky’s also breakin’ down the dirty bird celeb gossip of the week… and Turrtle gets in on the dish. Love to our fans, music for your sexy ears, and guaranteed laughs along the way!

Now that you’re in love with The Shimmies, visit them on their Website, get them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter and listen to more of their music on MySpace.

Get the album To All Beloved Enemies that is receiving much praise on Amazon or Cd Baby
- entertheshell.com

The Shimmies are probably the best band you’ve never heard of! So why are they the Artist of the Week? The Shimmies’ solo debut album, To All Beloved Enemies, is probably the year’s best album! The album is a major breakthrough for a band, which features two brothers, due to its blend of Radiohead meets Deathcab for Cutie, with a touch of Michael Stipe.

The band is from Central California (Chico to be exact). The band name is a blend of the band’s two brothers first names: Sean & Jimmy. Keeping it in the family is the name of the game for this band, adding another brother Stephen to the band and longtime friend Jack Gingerich. With a passion for music, their sound has been developed through the years, starting off as an acoustic duo, to their bigger rock sound, which they call “Home School Rock.”

The band’s dark sound has often been associated with Sigur Ros and Jeff Buckley. The band takes it back to the roots, by incorporating harmonies along with the dark sound, which is a fitting tribute to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Wednesday Morning 3AM,” which they listened to as kids.

The lead off track to their album, “The Thing That Seems The Hardest Is…” is by far the band’s signature track. It blends all their influences well, while giving our Editor Sara a brief shout out. The harmonies, combined with their rich, dark sound make it a song very reminiscent of the early 90’s rock scene.

As the album plays, there is no shortage of great tracks. As the album takes you back to a magical time in rock music where bands cared more about sound and lyrical content than selling records. The Shimmies have taken their sound and put it out there for the whole world to listen. To All Beloved Enemies is without a doubt the best album of 2010. There are no “filler” tracks on the album as each song stands alone on its own merit and when sequenced properly, it is simply a masterpiece.

Check the links below to see when The Shimmies will be around the LA area and go out and support this truly phenomenal band. I am truly convinced that The Shimmies are on the rise, they have the sound and look, which are the ingredients necessary to become a top-tier rock band! Begin the grassroots movement and jump on the bandwagon before they become Rock Gods and forget about us little people! - entertheshell.com

The brothers Galloway grew up well shielded from the devil’s music. In fact, Christian music was the only soundtrack to the boys’ home-schooled upbringing until the secular stylings of the Beach Boys and later on The Beatles (pre-drug/mustache/Maharishi Mahesh Yogi years) were eventually allowed into the house. The Fab Four were the gateway to Simon & Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m., a pivotal record in shaping The Shimmies’ sweet harmonies: “We wore that cassette out behind closed doors,” says guitarist/vocalist Sean Galloway.

But leave it to an older brother to one-up Simon & Garfunkel by handing then-10-year-old Sean a copy of Nirvana’s Bleach.

“We were like, ‘What is this?’ ” Galloway reminisces about that monumental moment. “It almost scared us because we hadn’t heard anything like that. It was the first black-market music in the house.”

Some 20 years later The Shimmies are writing their own songs, chiseling rock ’n’ roll’s pockmarked history (as well as their own) down to one gleaming hour on their latest LP To All Beloved Enemies. Recorded at Chico’s Heirloom Studios with Chris Keene (whose studio touch has essentially made him the fifth member of local bands The Yule Logs and Armed for Apocalypse), Enemies is taut and muscular enough to heave these lads over the invisible force field that separates cozy Chico from the rest of the world.

It seems like only yesterday that The Shimmies were a soft and cuddly young band just getting their bearings, led by three happy-go-lucky brothers all with various stages of facial hair. In that short period of time, the Galloways—Sean, Jimmy and Stephen—and drummer Jack Gingerich have reached what amounts to superstar status here in Chico. Originally an acoustic two-piece featuring chief songwriters Sean and Jimmy, the duo lured a couple of friends to take on bass and drum duties for what would be the band’s Chico debut at the Ethos Music Camp (now The Collective Sound) back in 2006. Youngest bro Stephen and Gingerich eventually became full-time Shimmies, and the band members pieced together their debut full-length, The Frogtown LP, in 2008 while making a name for themselves with their always sweaty live shows.

The hard work has paid off. To All Beloved Enemies is the Shimmies fully realized. Rather than simply aping the band’s influences, the record loosely threads them together while bridging the implausible gap between coffee-shop folk and arena rock. Harmonies lilt over mighty choruses. And guitars go from spacey twinkles to heavy, stomp-box bursts, most notably in the song “Un Fantôme.” Affec-tionately dubbed “homeschool rock,” the music is unabashedly simple and effective.

Sean—the eldest Shimmie—says it’s his “terrible sleeping habits” that often lead to new songs. And while he likes the prospect of making music for a living, Galloway is still getting used to the possibility of reaching audiences outside Chico. He jokes: “Someone just asked me who I’d choose if I could be anybody, and I said J.D. Salinger. And they were like, ‘But he lived in total isolation.’ And I was like, ‘That sounds good to me.’ ”

Isolation will likely have to wait, since The Shimmies recently signed on with powerhouse Fanatic Promotion. And the band is already getting its share of digital ink around the blogosphere, and recent shows with L.A.’s The Delta Mirror and an upcoming gig at San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill are sure to heighten The Shimmies’ profile. Of all the uncertainties of being a musician, Galloway does have one clear mission for the band.

“My dream is to play in front of a packed room filled with people I don’t know,” he says. “That would be the true test if people really like us.” - NewsReview.com