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.