You can only be guilty by association-- never innocent. Shiner have released records recorded by J. Robbins and Bob Weston, and played with just about every big name in independent rock. And though they're supposed to be swell guys, they haven't written more than a couple catchy grunge anthems in the last five years.

Only Allen Epley remains from the band's original 1995 lineup, and what he's surrounded himself with is testament to why everyone else left this band. Their bassist doubles with Season to Risk, their guitarist hails from the endlessly tacky grunge-metal act Glazed Baby, and their new drummer comes to us from Epic Records' resident failures Molly McGuire. Groundbreaking post-grunge acts like this should give an indication of what these combined noggins came up with for Starless. It's almost as believable as Sugar Ray and it rocks as hard as Soundgarden (who don't rock at all, in case you came here by accident).

"The Arrangement," the obligatory oh-so-menacing and spacy ballad, is straight adult-contemporary rock; it serves as the "meaningful" song on Starless. We've also got some awful Filter- sounding stuff on "Kevin is Gone," and the repeat offender, "Semper Fi" from their DeSoto 7" from last summer. "Semper Fi" actually came off sounding pretty good on that record, but here, surrounded by this stifling assortment of mid-90's grunge metal and coated with laughable post-produced phase effects, it's dead in the water.

Starless is all over the place, like you'd expect a major label record to be. (Needless to say, this is particularly sad coming from an indie.) The vocal doubling sounds like Alice in Chains, for Christ's sake! There are even unnecessary space noises zooming in and out of the mix! The ironic chorus goes, "And I drove your friends away." If they put this record on, Allen, you sure did.

-Chris Ott