Sister Quartet SHEL Brings Folk-Pop To Helsinki Hudson

Folk-pop sister group SHEL brings its chamber-pop harmonies to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, September 1, at 8pm.

Appealing to fans of Sarah McLachlan, Nickel Creek, and Regina Spektor alike, SHEL gets its name from the four sisters who comprise the group: Sarah (violin, bass), Hannah (piano, keyboards, accordion), Eva (mandolin, cello, guitar, banjo), and Liza (drums, beatboxing). All four sing; they were all classically trained and homeschooled by a professional songwriter father and an artist mother. What comes out when they join forces is at once wholly organic but also delicately beautiful - a latticework of chamber-pop that connects the dots between bluegrass, the Roches, Philip Glass, and Led Zeppelin.

The billowing curtains of sound on Just Crazy Enough, the second full length album from virtuoso indie-folk band SHEL, will be both familiar and far-out to fans of the exciting sister quartet. The classically inspired mandolin, violin and piano are there, along with the band's glowing vocal harmonies. But we also hear dense, ethereal textures that hover between the digital and the analog. Grooves are deeper, emboldened with electronic ambience and beat-boxing. The overall effect sheds light on their broad collection of influences, from the daring rock bands of the 1960s to the contemplative composers of the 18th century, and even the waves of modern electronica.

Circumstances aligned in recent years for SHEL to work with Eurythmics co-founder and world-renowned electronic music creator Dave Stewart, whose production credits include albums with Annie Lennox, Stevie Nicks, Joss Stone, and Ringo Starr. SHEL arranged and recorded tracks in Nashville with long-time producer Brent Maher. Then Stewart, in his Los Angeles studio, sculpted sounds and beats to complement each track. The mandate was to uphold the soul of the songs, the acoustic musicality of the sisters as players, the subtlety of Eva's lead vocals and the colors of the four-way harmonies.

The other priority for Just Crazy Enough was to capture the intensity of SHEL's live performance. The answer lay in fully mining the sisters' wide-ranging talents. Hannah Holbrook says, "We were all instrumentalists long before we learned to sing and telling a story through melody and arrangement is the part of our work that we bond over most."

Album opener "Is the Doctor in Today" begins quietly with reflective lyrics, but swells with emotion and harmonies as a theme of searching is established. Liza's drumming and percussion throughout the record is exciting and creative, from the irresistible groove in "You Could Be My Baby," to her expert beat-boxing on "Rooftop." Hannah plays a hooky Moog synthesizer in "Let Me Do," which glides around Eva's voice with an organic inevitability. And after covering Led Zeppelin on their debut, SHEL risks sacrilege against the Rock Gods once again with their version of Metallica's "Enter Sandman," a 180-degree flip on the original, with whispered vocals and almost churchlike solemnity. Near the end of the album comes the unexpectedly vigorous and marching "Moonshine Hill," featuring a shot of Sarah's lively fiddle in a slice of pop music heaven. The album wraps with "Stronger Than My Fears," which grows from intimate folk to unearthly beauty, evoking a heath on the Irish coast or the moon of a nearby planet.

In a new music scene that's crowded, genre-twisting and attuned to mastery in live performance, SHEL's spellbinding live performances tap deep skills as instrumentalists and total trust to generate improbable power on stage. They share some contemporary musical DNA with Americana bands like Punch Brothers and Crooked Still, but just as surely with adventuresome artists such as tUnE-yArDs, St. Vincent, and Alt-J.

For reservations in The Restaurant or in the club call 518.828.4800. For the most up-to-date concert information, visit www.helsinkihudson.com.