The 2kDozen 500: #258 - Shrag, "Life! Death! Prizes!"

And from slick and silky disco business, cocktails at the pool bar and sultry sunsets to twitchy limbs and songs of conscience. This is not the new Shrag album but from 2010 instead, but I've intended to give them a good earing since I read about them in ArtRocker magazine.

Riot Grrrl business in the yelps and the straightforward bass playing; welcome developments. Brighton sea air fills the mind nostrils, yeah? And all the breathless punctuation, and the breathless singing. Never more like a fanzine made into music through prosaic magic.

"Ghosts Before Breakfast" gets stuck in with a gearbox bassline and that Britpop kind of guitar sound but before it was Britpop, spindly rather than Byrdsian. And chanted choruses. My nostalgia gland is glowing white hot.

People in harmless gangs, banding together to frig themselves an identity, rubbing themselves against what they aren't to find a new them. That's what it sounded like.

Rating: Banding Together out of Glorious Necessity