The Shyness Clinic were a band from Boston, formed in 1995 and active until somewhere around the turn of the millennium, based on their contributions to a couple compilations and the fact that March of 2000 was the last time their website was ever updated. One of the compilations was released in 2003, but I'm assuming that was posthumous. In an interesting bit of emo continuity, the band's drummer went on to play in Hot Rod Circuit.
The band's only LP was released in 1998, and it sounds exactly like you might hope for an emo record released that year. The Shyness Clinic played midwest emo; call it 'indie emo' or 'post-emo' if you will. I call it amazing, and forever my favorite genre of music. The Shyness Clinic are maybe a little poppier than you usually hear in this type of 90s midwest emo, bringing in a certain bounce at times, but they also have that lonely sense of space found in bands like Forty Nine Hudson and Boys Life. They're diverse, I'd call it, taking a lot of sounds from a variety of adjacent genres.
Their first release was The Pleasures of Beginning 7" in 1996. The first song on the single, 'A Certain Distance,' was also included on their CD EP, but the second track was not. In 1998 they put out a split with Everyone Asked About You and the full-length album Sea of Redlights. I'm not positive which came first, but I believe the song from the split was rerecorded for the album and not the other way around. Their final release was one of the Insound Tour Support series, volume five. The digital release of the album includes the EP appended as bonus tracks.
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