Shinyribs Beams a Light through the Darkness with ‘Fog & Bling’

Kevin Russell-led Shinyribs is more an event than a band, more a force than a show. But music and feeling good are at the heart of it all, and the magic that the Austin swamp rockers blast out on stage somehow, improbably, has survived and thrived unharmed on recordings throughout their decade-plus tenure.

The latest album, Fog & Bling, continues that success through 10 tight songs that wiggle and rock, shimmy and shout, reflect and raise hell.

You know you’re in for a good time right from the get-go, with a funky beat and a staticky police radio announcing, “We got a big ol’ country boy … says he’s a singer for a band called ‘Shinyribs,’” perhaps prepping an unsuspecting town along I-10 for the life-changing magic that takes place when Russell and Co. slide in for a show to “Sing It Right,” as the opening song promises.

From there, “Highway of Diamonds” strikes a mellower mood, with Russell singing high and sweet and the band locking in beautifully, including dreamy harmonies from the Shiny Soul Sisters, Alice Spencer and Kelley Mickwee, that accompany the song’s protagonists as they hit the road to find new lives unknown.

“Hoods of Cars” lays the funk on thick, fueled by the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns (Tiger Anaya and Mark Wilson, who sound like many more than just two people, recorded or live), asking for deliverance from “the days of old” and, presumably, idleness: “You can’t tell who wrote the song / by just sitting and singing along / And you can’t tell the stars from Mars / from laying on the hoods of cars.” (Even if that car is, as the song namedrops, a Firebird or Trans Am, which hell yeah it is.) The phrase “lonely crazy” flits through the song’s bridge, then flips to “Crazy Lonely,” the title and opening words of the very next track. “When we’re together / We just sit there and stare/ At our phones glowing / We ain’t even there,” Russell sings, anguish front and center in his voice. It’s about how we interact with each other these days, in public and private. It’s crazy, and it’s lonely, and for someone like Russell, who hands his heart to every person present at his live shows and frequently talks to fans from impromptu Facebook videos filmed in his car, it’s got to be especially painful.

Fog & Bling is an album of many moods, which is not surprising considering its backstory. It’s the result of mining years of accumulated snippets and songs, at the encouragement of the late Austin bass player and producer George Reiff. After Reiff passed away in 2017, Russell finished the recordings with the help of producer David Boyle, creating what he calls in press materials a “time capsule opened in the presence of poets leading clergy to a field of wine drunk hippies parading half-nude behind a cattle drive.” It’s madcap and manic, but also sublime in a way that Shinyribs fans have come to expect and that will have new listeners seeing the light. It’s a crazy lonely world out there, but Shinyribs knows how to unite and uplift, how to part the fog and show us the bling.