Labels: Facepalm – Silver Sprocket
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Good grief, 22 songs by a pop punk band. Is that what you want to listen to? 22 songs? Of amateurish, lo-fi shambles? Fair play to you. I do enjoy a bit of Shang-a-Lang, playing their “Superchunk after 8 beers” brand of pop punk, but 22 songs, that’s quite a “chunk” of music. And each song is as rough and tumble as the last, a head first hurtle to see which band member manages to make it to the end of the song first, whilst the vocalist bellows himself hoarse. The issue is that most of the songs are pretty non-descript. Try differentiating one careless splurge from any other on this CD, it’s pretty impossible. Although when they do discover a little focus you get a song like “Sick of Pretending” which is an absolute corker, with buzzing guitars and better vocals. It sounds like Blew.
Taken as a package, this album isn’t much of a thing, but individually I do enjoy the endearing sloppitude that they present. On a 7″ single, and I suspect that in the live arena, this band is markedly more entertaining, but over the course 22 songs and 40 minutes, they out-stay their welcome I’m afraid.
Sidenote: Shang-A-Lang also appears to be the name of a Bay City Rollers song (and cartoon!), so I hope this is where the band name comes from.