MUSIC PREVIEW

Hiding In The Light
Shade

writer: STEVE MAY

fter the Strokes finished their sold-out show at Nick’s Fat City last fall, the guys in Shade tracked them down and kindly offered to show them the sights. Guitarist Nick Valensi and bass player Fab Moretti took them up on it, and the party sped off to the Upstage for ’80s Night. The verdict?

“Fab was cooler than Nick,” Shade bass player Brad Keifer says. “Nick seemed kind of perturbed. He wasn’t 21, so we had to talk the bouncer into letting him in.”

Shade definitely gets out, and its members are arguably better looking than their New York brethren -- if less scruffy -- but that’s where the similarities end. The Strokes stole their sound from New York of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Shade’s biggest influence is Her Majesty’s United Kingdom, and its members have done their homework diligently, dredging up everything from Donovan to My Bloody Valentine to Blur, doing honor to the hard-drinking, well-dressed lad lifestyle, sticking close together and looking after each other like the kids in Quadrophenia -- minus the pimped-out scooters.

Pittsburgh bands, according to the cliché, sing about beer and girls, not necessarily in that order. They give the people what they want, either with Buzz Poets crudeness, Joe Grushecky honesty or Submachine intoxication. They are not supposed to be pretty or graceful or sing with fake British accents. Maybe that’s what makes Shade so damn interesting.

This is a band that was weaned on New Kensington’s long-forgotten alternative outpost X-15, which in the early ’90s held court at 1510 AM on the local radio dial. Before sundown, between bursts of fuzz, they were treated to a modern rock take on the FM radio of the ’70s, with album tracks from Blur, Oasis and Suede alternating with Brit-approved American stuff like R.E.M. and Sonic Youth. The only local bands they cared about were mods Suburban Sect and Cure obsessives Low Sunday Ghost Machine.

Three would-be members of Shade -- Kiefer, guitarist David Woods and singer/guitarist Matthew Stuart -- played on the same high school soccer team before falling for music. The trio picked up instruments, and subsequently added swimmer Dave Halloran on drums and Craig Stuart, Matthew’s brother and confessed Younger-Sibling-Who-Used-to-Follow-Them-Around, on keyboard and percussion.

Shade played all-ages shows at the late Electric Banana, graduated to shows at the late Pluto’s, and moved on to the tough South Oakland basement scene -- where Shade kicked out the jams to sloppy, crowded, sometimes indifferent keg parties. It has spent the past year laboring over its debut album with old friend Tim Thomas -- formally of Suburban Sect, currently bass player for the Subterraneans -- and doing well attended, once-a-month shows on the dimly lit local bar circuit, most recently a super-tight, color-splashed performance with the brand-new Camera and Toronto indie drone band The Creeping Nobodies at the Lava Lounge.

The as-of-yet-unnamed album, which should be finished by mid-summer, accurately captures the band’s live sound -- poppy but with a solid, rock rhythm section. It’s full of sonic detail, psychedelic haze and swagger, recalling The Verve’s early work but not too closely, with everything from vintage Edge guitar flourishes to a James-ish bass line to a grinding, unmistakable “I Wanna Be Your Dog” chord progression thrown in for good measure. It’s stylish, atmospheric and image-conscious, and sounds like it would be perfectly at home in the late-afternoon X-15 play list. And that’s why it’s good.