VIA PRESS RELEASE | Creators of what Uncut magazine editor Allan Jones lauded as “…timeless, brilliant music” Shiva Burlesque was founded by transplanted northern Californians Jeffrey Clark (current IPR partner) and Grant-Lee Phillips (later of Grant Lee Buffalo), emerging from the alternative music scene of subterranean Hollywood/Downtown Los Angeles in the mid-1980s.
Drawing comparisons to everything from John Cale to Echo & the Bunnymen to early Leonard Cohen, the band was described by All Music Guide as “…a powerful and graceful band too post-punk to be folk rock, and too folk to be post-punk.” The original Mercury Blues album was recorded in early summer of 1990, and after being out of print for over two decades was remastered in late 2021 by Josh Bonati and released as a double CD by IPR in 2022 with a second full album of previously unreleased demos and outtakes called Skulduggery.
This newly expanded vinyl version features a 5-color 12” x 24” folding insert with liner notes by David Fricke—who in a 1988 issue of Melody Maker called the sound of Shiva Burlesque “a marriage of Joy Division’s shadowy abstractions and Love’s Forever Changes.” Also featuring entirely new artwork, printed in 5 colors on IPR’s iconic die-cut packaging created by label founder Bruce Licher, this new double album will be released on both black and translucent blue vinyl, and includes a postcard-sized full-color download card with code for a free download of the album.
