Shy Turtle with a Soft Spot is a side project of, you guessed it, the withdrawn bassist of The Musk Turtles band.
Since the MTs are such a harmony-heavy vocal group, having the bassist go off and do an instrumental variation of the same general precepts seems both obvious and bewildering. Is this the ultimate vanity project: “Hey Ma!—Hear what I’m playing when they’re usually singing!”
But that’s mean. Bass Turtle—his given name is Fritz—insists he just wants audiences to hear the wonders he hears through his monitors. English is a third language for Fritz, and not one that he’s mastered particularly well yet, so he’s adapted the Musk Turtles’ carefully wrought lyrics to synthesized keyboard sounds. Then he’s machine-tuned the drumbeats and channeled the guitars until they’re echoes of their former selves. Only his bass has a live bite.
OK, frankly, we’re still unclear whether this is sensational or solipsistic. But it’s wild to hear a local band’s tunes turned inside out and upside down. Fritz has given his misshapen reconstitutions as much care and thought as Missy and her fellow founding Musks gave to the originals. The band seems pretty confused themselves about what Fritz is doing, and have expressed neither support nor indignation. There are no plans for back-to-back pure-Musk and deconstructive-Musk sets at the moment, which should tell you something—either in sweet vocals or bleeps and bloops.

The Calamites and Grallator at Hamilton’s… The Bullfinch is closed for cleaning (a story for another time)…. D’ollaire’s also closed, for no reason that we can yet believe…