The Shivas Tickets

Live shows aren’t just The Shivas’ job: they are the band’s greatest love. Shivas shows are bombastic and thoroughly communal live rock and roll experiences where barriers between the performers and their audience seem to dissolve into the sweat and sound. The stage—or the basement, or the living room—that’s The Shivas’ true element. It’s their raison d’etre. It’s their religion. Together they’ve learned to thread a seemingly impossible needle: They’ve honed and tightened their performances without sacrificing the element of surprise that makes each show special.

So when Covid hit, the band knew it was time for transformation. “We got into a more community-minded headspace,” Leonard says. “It felt cool to see everybody come together to stick up for what they believe in. It feels like an incredibly formative last twelve months.”

The album that emerged from this new moment finds The Shivas reborn as a band that seems seasoned and perfectly at home with itself. There is a calm, even a hopefulness, to Feels So Good // Feels So Bad that sounds new. The Shivas didn’t write or record the album with a particular theme in mind, but one seems to have emerged: where the band’s last album Dark Thoughts was about confronting your demons with fearless self-examination, much of Feels So Good // Feels So Bad is about what happens once you find that peace: how being honest with yourself changes your relationships and your priorities. “I do think it’s about acceptance,” drummer/singer/songwriter Kristin Leonard says. “There’s a weird relaxation that comes with being at peace with things you can’t control or have regrets about.”

Yes, Feels So Good // Feels So Bad is an album about acceptance. Sometimes that acceptance feels enlightened and sometimes it feels like the end result of a lot of kicking and screaming. The Shivas have adapted in both of those ways. With new tours scheduled and a brand new album out, they’re still hoping--like all of us--for a new era of vibrant, cathartic live music. The lessons they learned from having their normal upended, though, have only helped them grow.