Wand, Shopping and Eagles of Death Metal Reviews

Shopping – Why Choose?

Most post-punk bands of late seem content with nailing all the signifiers of the genre on their records and leaving it at that. Shopping, however, offer more than nostalgia. Off-beat, frantic guitars and pulsating basslines aplenty, ‘Why Choose’ is step forward rather than a look back.

The jittery, spontaneous nature of debut album ‘Consumer Complaints’ is fleshed out throughout the second offering, with Shopping sounding more jagged than ever. There’s a Gang of Four feel to the way the East London band seem to write driving, repetitive basslines that serve as the spine of their songwriting process to which they can build upon with manic guitar lines and lyrics that feel too natural not to be improvised but are too great to be.

16/20

Wand – 1000 Days

From the moment a storm of synth notes urgently open the record on ‘Grave Robber’ to the melancholy winding closer ‘Morning Rainbow’, Wand’s third record in just over a year is a sonic utopia that flicks the switch between White Fence’s humble charm and Pond’s psych rock melt downs as and when it chooses to. You can only ever admire the haziness of the  record for a couple of minutes before a whirlwind of distorted guitars and phasered synths hit you like train, a perfect psych record.

19/20

Eagles of Death Metal – Zipper Down

How on earth could a record seven years in the making be so bad? Crawling with misogyny and male entitlement, Zipper Down would be a forgettable effort from a college band, it’s the sorta thing you’d expect Royal Blood to churn out in three years time when everybody has forgotten about them. Sure, there’s some tight drumming here and the occasional chord progression that hasn’t been taken directly from an early QOTSA record, but that’s about it. But then, what would you expect from an LP branded as an “eargasm” by a half of its creators. At least its sexist artwork ties in neatly with the music, though – there’s too much meaningless album art nowadays.

3/20 

By Marty Hill