6 for ’12:
Shoppers.

One of several amazing records that hit me just slightly too late for them to be incorporated into the big 2011 run-down, Syracuse NY trio Shoppers initially came to my attention when somebody I follow on Tumblr rated their ‘Silver Year’ LP (Feeble Minds Records) as album-of-the-year. And not without reason - it’s a total monster.

I don’t want to become the kind of blog that falls back on overblown macho clichés when considering heavy music, but if you’ll allow me some leeway just this once, this really is the kind of racket that hands you your ass and asks you to sign for it. Terrifyingly viscous, technically accomplished, riot grrl-informed punk rock, recorded in simple ‘room sound’ style, but with the guitar amp cranked to the level of pure noise, the drummer hammering through like a rhinoceros stampede – bloody great serpentine riffs, big landslide rhythms, tons of feedbacking skree, like the ballsiest heavy rock bluster taken on some sort of unheimlich futurist joyride.

Somehow, both the write-ups of Shoppers I’ve encountered so far – aforementioned Tumblr post and (where else?) Still Single – have concentrated on the lyrics. God knows how loud they’re listening to pick all that up, cos all I’m getting through my earphones is the occasional phrase or two – sounds like fragments of phone conversations overheard on buses, half-hearted fridge-door lovenotes and late night arguments, yelled back in the faces of their proponents with a bitterness that seems to lay bare their craven insincerity. Heavy feelings to go with heavy music.

Weirdly, the general vibe and production reminds me of nothing so much as Napalm Death’s ‘From Enslavement to Obliteration’ – the sound of a band looking to make things as dense and unapproachable as possible for their listeners, shedding fair-weather fans in seconds. January, February, my listening always falls back on this kinda thing, and ‘Silver Year’ is hitting the spot hard.

You can put it a bit like this I guess: punk is an essentially static/retrogressive form – always worthwhile, usually powerful, but prone to accelerated levels of repetition and stagnation. 90% of the time, no problem. But, just like it’s good to break up a diet of fun/escapist movie-watching by throwing on something completely fucked and demanding every once in a while, punk is a genre that occasionally needs a spanner in the works, something to come at it from a different angle and wreak havoc in the cheap seats, (if you'll allow me a coupla mixed metaphors). Shoppers is that.

You can watch a whole set by them in the video above. Doesn’t quite capture the beserk guitar-tone and blood-curdling vocalisms found on the record, but you’ll get the idea.

Labels: I like, Shoppers