SHEL (left to right: Sarah, Eva, Liza and Hannah Holbrook) will open for Jay Leno on March 12 at the Paramount Theatre and March 13 at Pikes Peak Center for the Performing Arts. Photo: Make Fake Designs)
By many metrics, the story of is a modern day music industry fairy tale.
It’s the story of four sisters who were encouraged to follow their dreams so brazenly that they eventually came true, seemingly without caveat.
Raised in a quiet country home in Fort Collins, Sarah, Hannah, Eva and Liza Holbrook (their names form the acronym the band takes its name from) were home schooled by their parents, Andrew and Lynn. Both were musicians, so when they weren’t organizing field trips into the surrounding wilderness, they encouraged their kids to learn how to play music: Sarah played the violin; Hannah, the piano; Eva, the mandolin; and Liza took up the harp. But when she started tapping out poly-rhythms on its frame, she switched to percussion.
Andrew and Lynn also inspired the sisters to dream as hard as they played. “Our parents raised with the idea that if you had a dream, you should follow it no matter what,” Eva said. It’s a stitch-pillow quote, but one they nevertheless took to heart.
SHEL is that dream. Six years in, the Holbrooks have realized it in a way that few other aspiring artists have. From to their idiosyncratic music and its accompanying videos, the sisters produce and concept all aspects of the band’s image and music. Both of their albums are self-released and .
To see lengths the band are willing to go to fund their dream, you only need look at what they’ve offered in their : A box of secrets about the band, homemade fortune cookies, a custom song — Eva even went so far as to put one of her mandolins up for sale. “We want to keep control of ourselves,” Eva said. “(The band) isn’t about being extremely successful, it’s about being true to (ourselves). That’s the only way we’ll ever be happy.”
That self-confident reliance begins with the songwriting. Like a toddler chasing a butterfly, SHEL’s music follows its own odd whims, and for its own reasons. Rooted in folk-pop, the band has a wily penchant for beat-boxed interludes and metal covers. It’s hard to define in marketable terms, a point that their current press release, which calls them “genre agnostic,” drives home.
That label is especially apt in light of the band’s upcoming sophomore album, “Just Crazy Enough.” It’s far poppier than the band’s debut, with gobs of splashy drums, shimmering strings and deceptively thoughtful songwriting that recalls another group of famously proud auteurs: The Beatles.
“I’ve loved the Beatles since I was six, and I appreciate them even more today,” Eva said. “When I put on headphones and listen to ‘Penny Lane,’ I’m just in awe. We love those kind of songs that are instantly accessible but deep, too.”
As the Beatles had , Eva considers their new album’s producer Dave Stewart as more of a collaborator than a supervisor. Much of the album’s pop glaze can be attributed to Stewart, a former member of the British synth-pop duo Eurythmics.
Besides his years of experience, the band was drawn to Stewart by his oddball sensibility, an attribute that Eva proselytized on as if it were a religion during our conversation. “When he was a kid in Sunderland, a group of kids cut him with a rusty can lid because they didn’t like how weird he was,” Eva said. “He put on a workshop about being a weirdo. He’s amazing.”
If that simply means doing things your own way, SHEL have weird stitched to their sleeves. (Literally: on stage, they have the stylistic cohesion of four separate sprints through a thrift store.) One of “Just Crazy Enough”‘s most enigmatic moments comes in a cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” With breathy harmonies, Eva and her sisters tease the metal standard into a moment of lost innocence and encroaching wonder reminiscent of something out of Peter Pan. “I know that song is sacred,” Eva said. “I hope that the rock gods don’t mind we did something completely different with it.”
