Nally says “folks can anticipate the surprising” with Cunning Shazam, and as such, they’ve earned a status for switching up kinds. Whereas audiences may be polarized by altering issues up with each album, it’s turn out to be anticipated from them. Nonetheless, the band’s hiatus from 2014 to 2020, following the discharge of Gonzo, was actually surprising.
Throughout this time, Nally supplied the hovering vocals within the refrain for Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ hit “Downtown,” and stole the present each within the video for the tune — using in bare-chested on a chrome eagle chariot led by bikes — and on the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.
The band returned with a revamped lineup of Nally, pianist Sky White, trumpeter/backing vocalist Alex Nauth, bassist Existential Youth, guitarist Devin Williams, and drummer Teddy Aitkins. Cunning Shazam launched three extra albums on their very own EEEOOHAH label (Burn, The Coronary heart Behead You, and Darkish Blue Evening) earlier than this yr’s one-two punch of Animality Opera and Field of Magic.
Nally says the shut proximity of releases was supposed to indicate what Cunning Shazam is able to, particularly contemplating the upcoming consideration inside the DC Universe. And he needed to separate the vibes of the spring and fall albums as a distinction.
“The extra information we do, as totally different as they could be, the factor that’s related is that they’re not related,” he says. “However this was the primary yr I used to be like, let’s give folks two examples of Cunning Shazam to allow them to see that they’re in distinction, and allow them to know we will do this. We will do that and every little thing in between.”
For instance, Animality is a “uncooked, unfiltered burst of power” recorded in Nally’s basement studio and with out a lot cash. In the meantime, Magic was knocked out at EastWest Studios in Los Angeles, the place the Seashore Boys recorded Pet Sounds. The album is “pleasant, constructive, and all about constructing good vibes” with the intention to attraction to a mass viewers.
That vary highlights the Cincinnati character of Cunning Shazam. Additionally house to The Afghan Whigs, Nally says there’s a bizarreness, randomness, and modest, well mannered leisure, and even “Midwest attraction” of what he calls the missed underdog metropolis. It permits him to embrace his personal weirdness, however challenge that oddness on the market. In a approach, Nally unintentionally highlights the quirkiness of an extraterrestrial immigrant raised within the Midwest who’s likewise well mannered and modest. In spite of everything, Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hail from one other Ohio metropolis, Cleveland, additionally the place Gunn filmed the film.
