The Oliver Shaw Experience - Of Darker Plains

Published on 16 June 2025 at 09:48

The Oliver Shaw Experience: Grit, Grunge, and Gothic Poetics

Spend five minutes with The Oliver Shaw Experience and you’ll wonder where this strange, beautiful noise has been hiding. Frontman Oliver Shaw isn’t just another brooding singer-songwriter from Camden. He’s something of a modern-day poetic prophet — equal parts Beckett, Cobain, and Milligan (Spike that is) with a soupçon of Syd Barrett and backed by a band that sounds like they’ve dragged their amps straight through the dark side of the moon.

Live, they’re raw and explosive, lead singer Oliver struts his stuff suited and booted sporting a kockout Fedora hat. Studio-wise,  Oliver leans into vulnerability — that unguarded, cracked-open honesty that somehow still kicks like a grunge revival. His voice doesn’t aim for polish; it aims for truth. That’s what his fans love. There’s this haunted quality to it, especially on tracks from the album ‘Of Darker Plains’, where lyrics deal in heartbreak, lost identity and the angst of 21st century  life.— but they never slip into cliché. It’s punk at the core, wrapped in sumptuous velvety gothic shadowplay.

And the band? It’s a collective experience — guitar lines that chime and squall, bass with just the right amount of menace, and drums that move with instinct. It’s clear this isn’t just some solo project. It’s chemistry.

What sets them apart is their literary edge. You can hear Oliver’s bookshelf in his writing — the surrealists, the absurdists, the poets that don’t flinch or falter. But it’s never pretentious. It’s storytelling for the disenchanted — gritty, melodic, a little bit mystical.

As well as song writing Oliver produces the bands music videos that accompany the single releases, Oliver being an accomplished cartoonist creates the storyboards himself. These productions exceed what you would expect from the small crowd funded budgets allocated for them and are always highly anticipated by the bands growing fanbase. To round of the package there are some quality T shirts and merchandise available from the bands own website.

Whether you catch them in the ‘Dublin Castle’ or their residency at the ’Good Mixer Pub’ in London or spin the record in the midnight hour The Oliver Shaw Experience feels personal. Like a secret passed down in the form of a riff, a lyric, or a sigh.

They’re not here to be background music. They’re here to haunt you — and make you feel a little more alive.

Recently I caught up with Oliver for a chat.

5 Questions.

Graeme: Do you usually write lyrics or melodies first—or do they arrive together, like an argument and its resolution?

Oliver:

As far as what comes first melody or lyrics, all I can really remember when I was young was my party trick. I had a good memory for movie soundtracks and TV theme tunes,
to which embarrassingly I would have to play a crazy sort of name that tune in the middle of the family living room with people shouting out requests or trying to guess what I was humming!

This I remember morphed into an early form of writing, bizarre as that sounds.
My mum would say, oh that’s pretty!
What is that your humming?
I didn’t know was the answer, haha.
It just sort of came to me as if in a dream I would say.
In retrospect this was probably in its own way a primitive form of me starting to write songs even before I had picked up an instrument.

Melody has always come first for me.
That is still the joyous part.
The lyrical side came much later, and probably started with me again as a child with my grandmother trying to make up silly lines to make her laugh (She played classical piano in the old east end music halls)

Any raw emotion in my now ever growing body of work usually comes after the melody.
Sometimes when I am trying to find melody in a song,
It’s like having a key to a darkened room, and once you enter you must find the missing parts to fix a light somehow.

Graeme: Has a song ever surprised you by taking a completely different direction from what you intended?

Oliver:

Yes it has, again especially when I was younger and starting to write.
I was so naive and would say oh I will write a Beatles style song or make it sound like Nirvana.
I still do this, haha.
However for many years now I have to see the song as the star of the show.
This thing the melody, has somehow passed through me and I need to give it legs and freedom to grow further.
Wether that is in the recording process, or by simply knowing it so well as a live song that you can experiment with it.
I am often surprised at how big a song has developed from a modest start on my acoustic guitar,
Suddenly becomes a great beast of a song!
I have a song entitled Amelie for an example This track in my mind was a big sounding ballard.
However after developing it I found it had a natural beauty to it, and I was so happy with how it sounded that I actually released the recording as a single a couple of summers ago.
Accompanied by artwork which I had created for the music video.

Graeme: Is there a sound, word, or chord you keep coming back to—and why do you think that is?

Oliver:

Not so much of a sound as I am always searching for new ones to suit the emotional side of the music.
However something that I am aware of and have been made aware of by those who are really hard core and follow my lyrics.
Is that I reference the sea alot
I also say ‘ Don’t go!
Or words to that effect a fair few times in my lyrics.
I honestly try not to Analyse this too much.
Like a comedian shouldn’t search too deeply where a joke comes from or what makes people laugh.
Like in song writing I have learned that it is all how you phrase it.
John Lennon and Jim Morrison still being two of my favourites were clever at making a turn of phrase or everyday saying become so meaningful.
Its all in the projection and sentiment.

Graeme: If one of your songs were a location, where would it be and what would it look like?

Oliver:

It would be a wide open field or as the Americans say a plain.
With someone in the distance barely visible.
Me shouting to them, and this becoming a void of sorts.
Hence my second album title 'Of Darker Plains'.
I was very interested in this at the time.
The idea of calling out to someone or something that doesn’t seem to connect or respond
Maybe that’s what I aspire to as an artist.
Just one other person to connect with.

Graeme: If you had to form a supergroup, who’s in the band and what instrument do they play?

Oliver: 

Band members and instrument wise The Doors would be my super group.
Like fantasy football I dont think you could better that band. 😃

 

©️Graeme Webb 2025

©️Oliver Shaw 2025

Links to other areas of the Web with useful Oliver Shaw Experience info

 

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