Shoplifting

The members of Shoplifting give off the impression that they are four people who don’t care what you think about them. They’re not out looking for the coolest of the cool kids to come to their shows, or for a bunch of marketers to come along and splash their faces all over fashion spreads in glossy magazines. And the thing about Shoplifiting is that they’re so good, they don’t have to care about what the cool kids are saying. The songs on this EP are lovingly structured with sparse, aggravated, droning guitars and throbbing drum beats as the vocals mirror the instrumentation. There is an aversion to doing the same old verse-chorus-verse thing, and instead the band has developed a more sporadic feel that is set off nicely with healthy amounts of shouting. Each song has the near-hollow sound that bands like the Raincoats so often achieved, but that hollowness contrasts with a spiralling frenzy that rides through each song.