Album: All or Nothing
Artist: Shopping
Genre: Post Punk
Sub-Genres: Synth Punk, Dance Punk
Label: FatCat Records
Non-Airable Tracks: N/A
Description: Happier Suicide. OK, that’s kind of a blunt, short, review, so let’s just break this album down a little.
This album gets the job done. It’s happy post-punk. In a genre dominated by Ian Curtises and Interpols and oh god forbid Iceage, we see something kind of happy and artsy and fun. That’s not the issue I have with the record, in that it’s happy. Sure, I prefer sad music; Elliot Smith and Deathconsciousness take up all the playtime on my poor little phone, and my Spotify subscription probably dumps far more money into the drunken and depressed than the bright and sunny. Happy records can be good, however. See: Sweet Trip, Kero Kero
Bonito’s stuff, and a lot of releases I’m sure my depressioncore doesn’t necessarily jive with.
The thing which makes an album good isn’t necessarily the “vibe” it gives off for me, but its originality or its technical work making the material. And… unfortunately, there’s just nothing that interesting in this album. Something I’ll reiterate (as I have done in most of my reviews), is that there’s nothing necessarily bad about that. It’s just… derivative. It feels like a bit of black midi had a baby with Suicide and with Velvet Underground & Nico’s voice made this. There’s a couple of good riffs here and there, but overall it feels… forgettable. It does the job, but just not good enough to be a standout.
Overall Rating: 5
Sounds Like: Suicide. Seriously no those guys made their first album in 1977. 77. That was like, during Talking Heads.
Reviewer’s Name: Abraham Aruguete
Date of Review: 02-23-2020