Pitchfork
March 3, 2009
Link
7.4
During the first wave of UK indie, Gang of Four wrote anti-love songs while bands like the Slits, the Raincoats, and X-Ray Spex rejected not only romance but also traditional femininity. In the Britpop 1990s, Blur snarkily claimed to see no difference between "Girls and Boys", and Elastica made sexual demystification a lot more fun ("You could call me a car lover/ 'Cause I love it in a motor"). Brighton's Shrag are a sharp up-and-coming poppy post-punk band smearing their own dark lip gloss on sex and gender. But you can always tell deep down they're looking for real, vital connection.
They find it in more ways than one on their self-titled debut album, which mostly pulls together songs released on mp3 and 7" going back to 2006, when "Don't Speak"-ably stinging breakup ballad "Hopelessly Wasted" made a few waves. More often the three-girl, two-boy guitar-synth rioters are more bellicose-- hitting the giddy stratospheres of early Long Blondes singles (minus the glamour) while tremblingly shouting down a cheating lover on spiky-riffed "Lost Dog", or holding a "long term grudge" on fast, still-furious "Long Term Monster". Shoplifting is hard on the unrepentantly unruly "Intelligent Theft", but bratty MySpace-quote pop sounds easy. The most divisive track is likely to be Kate Nash-conversational "Talk to the Left", a bare electro-punk update on awkward sex jams ("Did he really say, 'Baby, now I'm heading south?'") from the Au Pairs' "Come Again" to Art Brut's "Rusted Guns of Milan". "Cupboard Love" should get basement crowds belting out requests for W-2 information. You just haven't earned it yet, baby.
Like many of us in our increasingly autistic age, Shrag seek not just physical connections, but to participate in shared culture-- the essence of the English DIY movement. Even when they're talking about their bodies, Shrag use the language of fans. Love Is All-ish sax spree "Pregnancy Scene" is the best petulant protest against all our friends growing up and having babies since the Boy Least Likely To's "Monsters"; the only previously unreleased non-instrumental, "New Favourites", obsesses over a clique-changing best mate like she's a once-favorite band; "Mark E. Smith" is the indie kid's "Would you do that if Barack Obama was watching?". My absolute favorite song here, "Forty Five 45s", is a beautifully crafted, basically one-chord wonder sung by a narrator who'd notice every nuance in the mixtapes you give her and then be really fucking pissed when you take off with all her mp3s except Jeff Buckley. You could've at least left the Los Campesinos! zine.
Only connect? Not hardly: "Different Glue" grapples with groping strangers who will make you glad you stayed at home tonight. "Women get hassled at gigs if they're not with a bloke," Gang of Four's Jon King told critic Greil Marcus in 1980. The name Shrag, sort of a nice onomatopoeia for the younger group's tough-talking shambling, is also an actual English word that's obsolete. King's statement isn't-- neither is a good fanmade antidote to pop music that's some dying conglomerate's idea of how much self-expression you can handle. Things aren't perfect, but we've come a long way.
