(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Mitch Easter was for years one of the main drivers of the Southeast scene. Few can boast his influence on the renaissance that would turn that region into one of the epicenters of the 1980s.
Easter formed in Chapel Hill (North Carolina), together with Chris Stamey, Will Rigby, and others, first Rittenhouse Square and then The Sneakers. They debuted with the EP Sneakers (Carnivorous, 1976) and established themselves with the album In The Red (Car, 1978). Their work (including a third, unreleased album) was later collected on Racket (East Side Digital, 1992), and best anthologized on Nonsequitur Of Silence (Collectors' Choice, 2007).
In 1980, Easter founded the "Drive-in" recording studios, which became the origin of the entire Southeastern pop movement.
His band was called Let's Active (essentially Easter plus a rhythm section), and they sounded like a kind of even brighter, catchier R.E.M. (Easter had produced Stipe and companys first two records). The problem was that the songs on the EP Afoot (IRS, 1983) were primarily experiments in arrangement and production. Perhaps for this reason, Cypress (IRS, 1984) is considered a classic of psychedelic pop.
Easter was not very interested in melody, but at least Big Plans For Everybody (IRS, 1986) and Every Dog Has His Day (IRS, 1987) presented him as a true singer-songwriter, rather melancholic and pessimistic. Every Dog Has His Day (IRS) was a respectable album, featuring the power-pop of the title track and the beat-infused chorus of Mr Fool.
Easter returned to the scene in the 1990s, playing bass for his wife Angie Carlson in the Grover. My Wild Life (Zero Hour, 1995) is a diligent imitation of the Breeders.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Shalini Chatterjee, who had played in San Francisco's Vinyl Devotion,
leads the band Shalini, that features Mitch Easter on guitar and
Eric Marshall on drums.
We Want Jelly Donuts (Parasol, 2000) is a pop album, certified in
Let's Active's style, but the leader adds a strong persona
(as shown in the snappy, hard-rocking Creepy Emily and Destination Anywhere Else, or in the trancey raga of This is Telluride)
and an original voice
(that recalls in turn Liz Phair, Blondies' Deborah Harry and
Veruca Salt's Nina Gordon).
Easter's modernist production marks the baroque arrangement of
Telepathic World,
the syncopated beats of Conviction Overturned,
the distorted guitar charge of Desperate for Dawn,
the psychedelic electronica Emotion Bomb.
Despite the effort, in the end the winners are the simplest, catchy,
retro-pop tunes, Pandora at Sea and especially
Get Free, a supreme example of folk-rock magic.
Shalini has also released the mostly instrumental
Anneu'd (125 Recs, 2002) under the moniker Econoghost.
