Hoagie Shop

The Allentown, PA, group the Shillings had local hits with "Laugh" and "Lyin' and Tryin'" in the mid-'60s. Both songs are included on this collection, which is largely devoted to original material, although it also has fairly good covers of Jackie DeShannon's "Children and Flowers" and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's "You Baby" (done in the '60s by the far more famous acts the Ronettes, the Lovin' Spoonful, and Sonny & Cher). The Shillings were a rather modestly talented group that inhabited the lightest, most pop-oriented area of the '60s garage rock playing field, with vocal harmonies heavily shaded with the likes of the Beatles, the Beau Brummels, and the Lovin' Spoonful. That doesn't mean that the record isn't enjoyable, though it's not imbued with great innovation or significance. Their songs bounce along with a nice pleasantly melodic innocence, sometimes venturing into a gooier pool, as on the orchestrated "Strawberry Jain." In other tracks, they reflect yet other trends of the day, "Wild Cherry Lane" using a soulful horn section and "Seems Like Yesterday" deploying a cool gloomy Zombies-like organ, while "You Can Show Me the Way" sounds like one of the Monkees' more credible early tracks. As a tentative step into psychedelia, "Crimson Afternoon" is impressive in its melancholy organ-driven haze, though like much of the CD, it has only fair sound quality.