Latitudes
SHIT & SHINE
Ladybird | CD (Latitudes)
- Ladybird [42 minutes!]
The last time I saw Shit and Shine perform live, they turned up late, played one song that lasted twice as long as their set permitted, and refused to leave the stage, even after their amplifiers and mics had been unplugged. When the time-out, neck-slash signals of duress from the wings finally became too much, they left the stage to bewilderment, rapt applause and a keyboard demo of Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". It was punk rock in a bottle! For those in the audience who were there to see a band make and break their own rules it was nothing short of a revelation.
Shit and Shine are a band that follow their own formula - the kind of devious experiment at the back of the science lab that blows the room apart: 4 drummers + 2 bassists + 1 toy keyboard = 1 riff x 42 minutes = evil fun!
They're a real take-no-prisoners noise trip to a verrrry darrrkkk place. The music is unrelenting, a deranged stew of the Strangulated Beatoffs, early Surfers, Skullflower, PiL, Melvins and the tribal drummier parts of the Boredoms. It's a glorious din, which startles, hypnotises and infuriates. That's why we love these guys and wanted them to record a session for us; the sheer gall of it, the motorik drum hammering, the holy crap vocals, the collosal bludgeoning bass riffs, the casiotone trauma. Every single second of the pleasure and the ordeal... it's all totally perfect, with a pop sensibility hidden inside its belly - who could want for more? Sadists?