The Shadow Ring, City Lights (side A)

By the time of 1994's Put the Music in its Coffin, the Shadow Ring's distinctive sound had grown somewhat refined and recognizable.  1993's City Lights dates from a time when the group was still developing its sound, and the results seem a bit less focused as a result.  Simple, plodding guitar lines and beating drums appear in some places, but they feel a bit less structured.  The biggest difference might be the decreased emphasis on narrative vocals, as both a sonic and structural element.  Some songs are pure instrumentals, and one features vocals purely as sound source.  These ideas would re-emerge in a far more extreme form on Lindus and I'm Some Songs, but here they sound more like sketches for the vocal songs that appear alongside them.  While the primitive playing seems purposeful by Wax-Work Echoes, here it still feels incredibly rough.  City Lights is still a remarkable record—it moved in a very different direction from many of its contemporaries, in an era when the Dead C held a huge influence, and it foreshadows the group's many advances that would follow.  The sound is of course purposely rudimentary, and the glued-on black and white drawing of cats and mice at a dinner party fits the contents perfectly.